LOL

Don't you mean you had an "efternoon?"

Rainy days in the right location can bring many to the surface. But still can be hard to spot if you aren’t watching for them

They are fortunately still very abundant here. Amazing creatures

Wide-angle photo of a newt on a wet log showing the forest floor with old logs and green plants behind it. The newt is bright orange with small red spots outlined in black. Everything in photo is wet with glistening water.

Had a three -eft afternoon while walking between ponds listening for toads. Warm, rainy spring afternoons are perfect weather to bring out these beautiful and toxic amphibians.

Love how similar the sound is to the North American wood frog

The noisy chaos that is Marsh Frogs this time of year!

Males calling, wresting and a pair in amplexus, all filmed in the 5 minutes that I had the hide at Rainham to myself!

#pondlife #ukwildlife #wildlife

Out listening for toads on this fine, warm, damp northeast Ohio night. Only a little toad activity, but peepers still going strong!

An elongated beetle with metallic green head and pronotum, bright pink elytra, and a black abdomen. It is standing among yellowish-white mushrooms.

There were also rove beetles running around swiping fly larvae. It was a whole tiny ecosystem on one log. Amazing.
(Chroaptomus sp.) #invert
Intag Refugio, Ecuador

A four-panel comic. In panel 1, two people are standing in the forest, wearing backpacks. The red-haired person says "I've never hiked with a naturalist before! I'm excited. I hope I brought enough water." The brown-haired person says "I'm sure you did. Let's go!" In panel 2, the brown-haired person points at various nature features. "Look, a red eft! It's the teenaged form of the Eastern Newt. Ooh, wintergreen! Wanna smell it? I hear a Chestnut-sided Warbler. Glacial till. Rubble of the last ice age!" In panel 3, the naturalist points to more nature items. "This forest seems early successional. Aw, a leafcutter bee with a piece of leaf! Wow, deer poor! Wow, fungi growing out of the deer poop!!" The red-haired person says "Okay, but..." In panel 4, the red-haired person continues, "It's been an hour and we've walked three feet." The brown-haired person exclaims, looking excited, "Three amazing feet!"

Sometimes you make a new comic, and sometimes you redraw an old one because you lost the original high res file 😅

A white bird with gray and black on wings, and yellow beak and legs. It is flying low over water with fish in its beak.

Gulls were following the freighter, snapping up fish

Down at the Flats in Cleveland this afternoon. Time lapse of a freighter going around Collision Bend, a very twisty part of the Cuyahoga River.

The small native bee’s barely visible head with blue eyes and antennae poking out of a tightly closed orange Apricot Globemallow flower.

Change your focus, change your life.

~•~

Male Globemallow Bee (Diadasia diminuta) in Apricot Globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua).

🌿 #Invertebrates

Close up view from the side of a broad, dark-gray salamander. Its head is looking to the left, and it has large, black, bulgy eyes. Its forelim is visible. Near the bottom of its side, around the forelimb, and on bits of its chin are very small, faint blue specks. It is on a background of earth and small pieces of wood, and it has some dirt on it. It looks robust and healthy.

Jefferson's salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) found under a log a few days ago. It was about 100 meters from a wetland where these salamanders breed. The breeding season wrapped up about a week ago, so it was probably in the process of moving away from the pond until the next season. Ohio.

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

It made it a special day!

Absolutely!

Close-up of a large snake sitting in shallow water with thin green reeds around it. The large snake's color pattern is thick dark brown bands separated by thinner, cream-colored bands. The big snake is curled around a slightly smaller snake. The big snake is in the process of swallowing the smaller snake. The smaller snake's patter is a dark black background with bright yellow lines down the back and side, and some small red markings.

Scanning old slides brings back good memories. Almost 25 yrs ago spent 90 minutes watching this California kingsnake eating a big garter snake on the side of a pond in Napa County, CA.

so great that you have them in your yard!

A gator truck full of buckets containing cuttings from mature plants.

I’ve been volunteering at my local park. We are currently in the magical 3 weeks each year when you can take cuttings from mature plants and re-plant them and they’ll root! It’s easy and a free way to restore areas previously overrun with invasive species or to replant stands of dead trees.

A western fence lizard on a granite rock looking towards the right. He, or she (I'm no lizard expert) has some blue under its chin and a little on the sides. There's a lighter patch, perhaps a light tan around his stomach.

Western fence lizard on a rock, side profile. Some blue is seen lower down towards its stomach area.

83F already and the garden Western fence lizards are running around all over the place and taking their rightful places on the rocks where they can survey their kingdoms.

Bird tracks in the snow ending at a divot with two clear wing prints on either side.

Sharp-tailed Grouse launch pad
(my subsequent 'heart-attack' not depicted 😂)
#birds

Brown frog floating in shallow water with old leaves underneath.

Small woodland pond, with trees in the background. In foreground, underwater, with many round clusters of black frog eggs.

Lots of wood frog breeding in northeast Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday this past week.

Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature The feature, which Grammarly shut down Wednesday, presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—without their consent.

I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.

State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.

www.wired.com/story/gramma...

Close-up of regenerated salamander tail. More the half of the tail is regenerated. The original part of the tail is thick and has a mottled gray-blue and black pattern. The regenerated part of the tail is much thinner, and plain gray with no pattern.

Whole body shot of a salamander on a brown piece of bark. Salamander has a thick body. View is of side of salamander. body is mix of gray-blue to light-blue mottled markings on a dark gray background. More than half the tail is regenerated. More the half of the tail is regenerated. The original part of the tail is thick and has a mottled gray-blue and black pattern. The regenerated part of the tail is much thinner, and plain gray with no pattern.

Unisexual Ambystoma salamander from Ohio seen today with more than half of her tail regenerated. It may have been bitten off in a previous year by a predator like a raccoon. With a little time and energy investment, she grew it back.

Photo of a backyard with a wooden fence. Snow is present in fence shadow, but not where sunny. Makes a line of snow across yard.

Fence effect snow

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers.

The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

UNC-CH Will ‘Scrap’ New Recording Policy, Chancellor Says The move comes less than three weeks after the controversial rules were enacted.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings.

This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains underexplored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance chang...

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...