There are a lot of gatekeepers out there and you are destroying the future of the field with your lack of creativity. Do something useful. Step aside and allow the field to advance.

Our gardens @riceuniversity.bsky.social continue to deliver. Painted bunting and summer tanager.

Scientists that do not like to teach can never really rise to their full potential. Teaching, even elementary classes, is the path to deeper understanding.

Two grosbeaks @riceuniversity.bsky.social a female rose breasted and an immature male blue grosbeak.

On earth day, we are running a fundraiser for Houston Audubon for conservation of birds and to bring birds and nature to people. Please come to this all day event if u r around. we could also use your help in fundraising. You can donate to our team! houstonaudubon.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/h...

The biofilm I guess must be some combination of bacteria and fungi, feeding off the dead organic matter for energy as there was no energy input into the system (sun). The bubbles must be CO2 not oxygen as there is no photosynthesis going on.

I got this ecosphere 25 years ago. Algae and shrimp. The shrimp died after five years after which I took the system out of sunlight. I thought the entire system had died but today I looked at it and found this white biofilm with gas bubbles in it! Alive for twenty years! No sun.

A massive goatsucker. Chuck-wild-widow over @riceuniversity.bsky.social today!

Neither am I. I don’t have any preferred hypothesis. But none of them seem that ideal I guess. In my naivety

Hmmm. Based on one tiny point? What about all the observations of ferric iron clay which seem to indicate deeper oxidative weathering?

But we don’t know on early earth either. I just sped red the paper - they seem to conclude that they don’t know also. It could be O2 but there are other oxidants candidates. In any case, I find that any interaction with atmosphere probably is too slow to oxidize much of the planet n

So coming as an outsider, I’m going to ask the most basic question out there that nobody seems to be able to tell me. How did Mars become so red. Obviously oxidation but by what process? Have we figured it out?

Eat them as is. But avoid unripe ones.

Mulberry picking time.

And two more swallow-tailed kites today @riceuniversity.bsky.social. Today, raptors, swallows, swifts and waders were flying overhead, going north. Even in this urban environment, migration is going on, just high in the sky.

But resources aren’t usually abundant.

When resources are abundant, everyone gets along and shares.

Swallow-tailed kite @riceuniversity.bsky.social they have arrived!

The European Starling is quite handsoquite handsome bird.

New work challenges the idea of a “wet” Moon🌙💧
Our GCA study, with Raj and @cintylee.bsky.social, shows water-rich lunar melt inclusions form via magmatic recharge, instead of requiring a wet mantle! The Moon may still be strongly volatile-depleted. @riceeeps.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.gc...

Two yellow birds at @riceuniversity.bsky.social. A hooded and a Prothonotary Warbler. Both breed in the hardwood or bottomland forests of southeastern North America so the are typically the first to arrive.

I laid some boards down in our flood control @riceuniversity.bsky.social area hoping one day I’d find a narrow mouthed toad (really a frog) underneath. I hear them but these are tough frogs to actually see. Today, after many years, I found one!! What a beautiful but weird looking frog!

arclogite sample from the Sierra Nevada, California. These are deep arc cumulates. I got started on these rocks when I was an undergrad... they have taken me down many many paths. But above all, they are just pretty to look at.

Long-tailed Skipper @riceuniversity.bsky.social

Promachus hinei, a robber fly. These are indeed flies, but they are quite the predator. I have seen them take down dragonflies much larger than itself. But besides what they do, they are just beautiful creatures.

An Arabesque Orbweaver with dew on its web.

Spring is here. Black-and-white warbler @riceuniversity today. That plant on the left is known as “ball moss” but it’s not a moss. It’s a bromeliad, like pineapples. These epiphytes host a number of insects so the birds are often seen probing them.

Our first of season scissor-tailed flycatcher @riceuniversity.bsky.social flew over while we were hawkwatching. Spring is here. This bird was moving north very fast but we managed to get a couple of photos as it passed overhead.

Rufous-tailed jacamar from Honduras. They are in the Piciformes order, which contains puffbirds, woodpeckers, and toucans. They feed on insects by catching them in flight from exposed perched.

A red-throated loon and a western grebe turned up in Galveston, Texas. Both very rare birds this far east, but somehow they were together for a brief moment in time.