Nudibranchs and Tunicates at Dawn – The Tidepooler
Tide Pooling Log: Nudibranchs and Tunicates at Dawn September 22, 2024 The lowest low tides come in cycles as many days in a row boast negative tides impacted by the moon’s orbit. If you’re familiar with the way the moon impacts the tides, ^(https://www.blogquicker.com/goto/https://thetidepooler.com/2023/03/23/tides-sun-moon-tide-pooling/) this makes sense. For tidepoolers, these cycles encourage us to be on […]
California May List Ancient, Iconic White Sturgeon as Threatened
The Bay’s white sturgeon—huge, slow-to-reproduce “living fossils” that have hardly changed over their approximately 200 million years on Earth—are now facing such peril that the state of California has closed fishing for them under emergency regulations while it considers listing them as a threatened species. White sturgeon lurk in the murky bottom of San Francisco […]
Animal Three-Quarter Views • John Muir Laws
Let’s look at 3/4 views of animal faces! This is one of the most useful ways to think about drawing animal faces, because you’re more likely to see 3/4 views than any other view! This workshop includes a mini-lesson on heads of herbivores vs. carnivores and primates. (Session from 13 June 2024) Please share if […]
Guest blog – Viewers May Find Scenes in This Nature Programme Upsetting by Beth Richardson – Mark Avery
Beth is a Sussex-based nature writer who has enjoyed writing for websites, local newspapers and monthly regional and charity magazines. She has recently completed an MA in nature and travel writing at Bath Spa University and hopes to use her new skills and experience in purpose-led PR to write about conservation and rewilding. Warning: Viewers […]
Marine Invertebrate and Intertidal Terms – The Tidepooler
Marine Invertebrate and Intertidal Terms July 9, 2024 Tide pooling isn’t an exclusive hobby for those only with scientific knowledge. But because it deals with marine invertebrates and the ecology of the intertidal, there is plenty of science to delve into, if you want. Every scientific field has field-specific terms that are used to simplify concepts […]
Don’t Make Them Cross the Road
A few days after Thanksgiving last year, a male mountain lion approached Highway 17, the twisty, traffic-filled, high-speed corridor that connects San Jose with Santa Cruz. In previous years, the mountain lion might have turned around. Or it might have jumped out and been hit by a car—like four other mountain lions recently killed on […]
Journaling Situational Awareness, Weather, and Nature’s Unfolding Stories • John Muir Laws
Miriam Morrill, author of Pyrosketchology: An Illustrated Guide to Observing and Journaling about the Fire Environment, gives an introduction and examples to journaling wind observations for enhancing situational awareness (personal safety planning) and examples for using temperature and humidity metadata for observing the intimate relationships and between weather and phenology (unfolding nature stories). Class session […]
Illegal use of lead ammunition to shoot Mallards continues – Mark Avery
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749124014702 ^(https://www.blogquicker.com/goto/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749124014702) This paper looks at lead pellets retrieved from shot Mallards in the 2020/21 shooting season at a time long after the use of lead ammunition to shoot ducks was made illegal in England (similar but slightly different rules apply in other UK nations). Most Mallards in the study were shot with lead ie […]
Pre-Dawn Summer Low Tide in Orange County – The Tidepooler
Tide Pooling Log: Pre-Dawn Summer Low Tide in Orange County July 17, 2024 Pre-dawn summer low tides are some of the best of the year in Southern California. You can avoid the crowds and the heat while getting the warm water summer species during an excellent low tide. I took advantage of several of the low […]
To Protect Plovers, We’ll Have to Outwit the Ravens
Photography and text by Sarah Killingsworth Matt Lau is scanning for tiny beige spots in a sea of sand. For the past nine years, Lau, a National Park Service wildlife biologist, has been playing this beachfront Where’s Waldo at Point Reyes National Seashore during spring and summer. He’s looking for western snowy plovers (Charadrius nivosus […]