Return, Confession
Can you blame me for being unable to resist the allure of this moth? *Door closes*. I’m home. I know my hair is tousled, my backpack is splitting at the seams, I have lipstick and Lepidopteran-scales on my shirt collar. But the wait is over. I’ve been unjustifiably silent. My bravado about long silences in the last post was just that - bravado. I missed you. You missed me. Tears were shed. Beds went cold. Allow me to attempt a rekindling of the flame. What better way than a baring of the soul? A confession? Here goes: ...I’m seeing other organisms. I know, I know! You came here for fungi. But as I intimated long ago, there’s a whole world of creatures out there, and I Iove (almost) all of them. As I get older, my perspective be steady broadenin’. Birds, nudibranchs, marine mammals, fish... I can no longer pretend. I’m Biodiversiphilic. If you hold my hand and keep in mind whatever it was you liked about me as the blogger you first met, I think we can get through this. Here’s what I’ve been up to recently:
I went to Borneo. I found this ^ thing. I don’t know what it is (edit: Danny Newman and Jimmie Veitch suggested Gloiocephala; I think they are correct!). If you promise that you’ll stick with me while we work this out I will show you a bunch more pictures of stuff from Borneo. I will even tell you some naturalist pro-tips about what to do while you’re there. Pinky-swear.
This is an almost-unbelievably scenic coral-reef tableau. I know this might be hard for you to hear, but I spent a fair amount of time underwater this summer. There was just so much to see. It’s beautiful down there. I’ll tell you all about it. Just give me some time. Do you know about Kraits?
This is a Humpback Whale. It is leaving the ocean and being in the air. Given the number of tons that a Humpy weighs, this is an impressive feat. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been spending a lot of time both under the salt water and on top of it. The Ocean is my mistress, and I am her adoring devotee.
I’m a birder; you probably know this much. It hasn’t rained on the Central Coast of California in months, so I feel pretty comfortable saying that I wasn’t getting my needs met. I look at a lot of birds to fill that space. The one pictured above is a Geothlypis, and it makes a pretty convincing case for being a hybrid Common Yellowthroat x McGillivray’s Warbler hybrid. Is it actually? We will probably never know. Please stay tuned. I’m branching out. I’m learning to love more. And I’m teaching classes: http://www.redwoodcoasttours.com/events/