Today was our grocery shopping day. I usually pick out some flowers to take home and today I picked a dozen of these pretty “Duett” roses. They are very showy with their pinkish orange color. The color is similar to that of salmon steaks or flamingo feathers. Click on the image to enlarge.
This is from the “You’ve gotta be kidding me” file. A group of so-called scientists in India wrote a paper addressing the topic of “increasing pressure on land is making meat production from macro-livestock less sustainable than ever before.” Their solution to the so-called problem is for people to stop raising cattle, hogs, etc. and to commence harvesting and eating insects.
Sherwood Idso of the CO2 Science website thinks that global-warming and climate change activists themselves should be leading the charge for entomological cuisine:
Globe-trotting Al Gore, for example, could dine on wasps, bamboo caterpillars, crickets and locusts, which Premalatha et al. tell us “are sold as delicacies in the finest restaurants and food shops in Thailand.” Or he may choose the very special rice-field grasshopper, which they say “is a luxury food item in Japan,” as are canned hornets. And James Hansen: when in Mexico, he could feast on escamoles (the pupae of an ant species) and gusanos (butterfly larvae), which are sold there for half the price he would have to pay in Canada, where they go for almost two U.S. dollars per gram (that’s over $900 per pound!).
Well said, Mr. Idso. Read the entire article at CO2science.org.
We were standing at the courtyard wall watching the Curve Billed Thrasher nest, when a parent bird returned to the nest to feed the chicks; they are toward the bottom of the frame with their beaks wide open. Click on the image to enlarge.
We started planning on viewing the total eclipse even before experiencing the annular eclipse last week. We think that we will observe the total eclipse from Casper, WY, although that could change.
The eclipse is still more than five years in the future and since it will occur on a coast to coast path across the United States, there are a lot of places to view the phenomenon. The greatest eclipse will occur in Western Kentucky – that is when the duration of totality is the longest – two minutes and 40 seconds of totality in this case.
Image: Path of totality across the states. Click to go to the official NASA eclipse site.
Wherever we decide to view the eclipse, I’m sure it will be spectacular. In Wyoming, totality will last about 2 minutes and 24 seconds. That’s plenty of time to see the stars and planets come out and for the surface temperature to drop noticeably.
This is a long time away, but we wanted to make this note about it on the blog. Maybe over the next five years we can organize an expedition of family and friends to enjoy the event. We’ll see . . .
There is a mesquite tree across the road, just southwest of our lot, that appears, from certain angles, to be growing from three feet off of the ground with no apparent connection to a root system. In truth, the creosote in the foreground conceals the branch from the main trunk of this mesquite that arcs out to the suspended growth above If you look closely, you can see the connection. Click on the image to enlarge.
A little over two weeks ago, we discovered a curve billed thrasher nest in the cholla in front of our house. Today, there are two little chicks in the nest. There were three eggs two weeks ago, but apparently one didn’t make it. To give you an idea as to the size of these little ones, the mouth of the nest is about four to five inches across.
We will keep a lookout for further development. Click on the image to enlarge.
UPDATE: Much to my surprise, I looked into the nest today and saw that Mama Thrasher had deposited another egg in the nest.
Yesterday, we went to the post office and the supermarket. While Bob was checking the PO Box, I walked over and took this picture of some cactus flowers on a devil’s tongue cactus behind the bank. Click on the image to enlarge.
