26sep2026

I kinda like those sort-of bilateral dates (i.e. 26sep26), so here's a bonus post on one, albeit not a very exciting one.

So here's a couple of cool linkies, the “new” (to western science, that is, not the locals living with them) tiger cat species plus Audobon's splendid collection of a hundred photos submitted to their 2026 challenge —seeing all these wonderful bird pix makes my heart happy, but the ongoing theme in the photographers’ comments (which I find adds to the interest) is ‘please, we must protect this disappearing species, this shrinking habitat’ —which gets no argument from me.

Or you can check out this very mid doodle;)

25sep2026

I happen[ed] to be coming home from a somewhat stressful meeting with X, who was deeply amused by some hapless crittur that attached itself to the windshield of the car. I felt sorry for it as we accelerated, afraid its wings would get bent out of shape; but it its feet gripped the glass securely, even allowing it to rotate to a more comfortable position to protect its wings. I explained to my friend that I thought perhaps van der Waals forces were involved in its adhesion, since I'd heard of the classic example (gecko feet); a few minutes of putzing around n the intertubes, ahem, additional research suggests that insects also use mechanical means: thousands of tiny hairs hooking into microscopic irregularities in the glass, of which a windshield, constantly battered, would have plenty.

When we next stopped, our passenger took the opportunity to fly away, unharmed; of such tiny events do I daily give gratitude—it's not enough to balance the many insects sacrificed to windshields, nor the many mammals hit by cars, but this one escaped. So do I give thanks every time my foot or bicycle wheel avoids crushing a harmless worm or insect (to be sure, I am not so noble as to spare [perceived] enemies, such as the unfortunate species like mosquitoes or lanternflies).

So this photo, which I happened to stumble upon shortly after, of a similar insect, is a sort of thank-you/follow-up to the convo I had with X; other artists, have, however, contributed to science just by the power of their observation alone; the linked article mentions one of my very favourite flower painters, Rachel Ruysch, though I'd like to push back a tiny bit on the “amusing mistake” of choosing a showy butterfly instead of the pollinating fly that would have actually been attracted to a carrion flower that Ruysch would've been lucky to see alive in botanical gardens, let alone in its natural habitat. This the Science News article author also notes, and the scientist she cites says one way of sorting accurate observations from artistic fancies is to see if given motifs (i.e. swallowtail butterflies on all different kinds of plants, not just their hosts) recur; my point is that, in absence of scientific data you might as well sub in something that makes the client happy, and Ruysch was an extremely successful painter who undoubtedly knew that her client would appreciate a) the latest large, exotic showy flower discovered by Dutch science and b) a large, showy butterfly. (Indeed, if I hadn't guessed, the museum exhibit of her work made a point of this. In fact the entire bouquet is a fantasy, as the flowers in Ruysch's bouquets were nearly always from differing seasons.) She knew this.

The butterfly was not a mistake, and not sloppiness, but a conscious choice by a meticulous botanical artist.

(IOW, the rules for botanical illustration in the 1600s were different than they are today, and it pays to keep that in mind;)

And of course, ordinary people make all kinds of cool scientific discoveries, as with the high school students who discovered urban raccoons are morphologically diverging from their country cousins. There are even apps where you can upload sightings of various plants and animals:) (which data said students, above, used to make their determinations.)

So here we go, a little art ref of the natural world. Enjoy.

23sep2026

O hai, I wanted to post on the Equinox, and I did at least start this yesterday, but I was having some issues, some of which even resolved (I feel the IRS gets dumped on so hard that I should point out that my interactions with them—both on the phone, yesterday, and in person, today—were speedy, pleasant & polite, so far as I can tell, have finally resolved the issue I've been going back and forth in snail mail for the last 3 or 4 months: I really kind of feel for them, what with so many positions cut, and it's not, after all, their fault you have to pay taxes—the blame lays squarely on Congress, to whom your ire should properly be directed. [Not that my ire isn't considerably greater for the other two branches of government, but that's a rant for another day. In the meantime, I find the mantra, ‘You're not paying taxes, you're buying civilization’ very helpful.] But I did have to assemble a lot of documentation.)

So! Happy Equinox, a day late. My desktop is back together and functioning, and the wizard is working with a will on the website updates—those will take a bit longer.

In the meantime, have a humourous photo of a day in the life of an outdoor artist;)

18sep2026

So there have been a couple of changes to the site over the summer, one major, the other minor. Minor is that the fan on my “desktop” (which is actually a box about 5x5x2" screwed onto the side of the desk) finally died, but during this process my access to things was sort of limited; because the wizard is awesome, he found a slightly larger box (say, 6x6x3") to take its place until a replacement fan shows up. Yay, I can answer email and browse the web. Oh, and make web pages again.

Much bigger is that after 15 or 20 years my old hosting service could no longer, and the new one is a) more expensive and b) has significantly less storage, which means that the large images are currently unavailable. I hope to have a page (when you click to get full-size) explaining this shortly, and perhaps some sort of login scheme for people wanting to access the more detailed images at some point in the future; in the meantime, please contact me for access.

Perhaps this will finally inspire me to revamp the site from its 90s design, make it a bit more phone friendly & easier to search...we'll see. In the meantime, to celebrate our return from Killbear, here's a sketch I did there last year.

Enjoy.

6sep2026

Well, I seem to have recovered from the head cold (& jet lag) following my return home, so I thought I'd post something:) To go with the nature theme, a link about the ability of a plant, B. trifoliata, to do complex mimicry of other plants leaves. I had read about this incredible ability before, but no-one had any idea how the vine achieved this; well, now some experiments have shown that the plant basically detects on some visual level its surroundings, which I find absolutely fascinating.

Possibly less so, a watercolour postcard from Japan. Enjoy.

17jul2026

Today's fun linkie goes with the subject! The flowers I'm featuring are in fact pollinated by small bees, but Magnolias—which petals are very nearly the same shape and magenta colour—are so old they rely upon beetles because bees hadn't evolved yet. Pretty cool! (Via slacktivist.)

From the same source, Re-reading Mark Twain while everything else burns which, alas, is currently literally true: the canadian wildflowers wild fires are so bad the air-quality index metering nearly pegged out yesterday, at over 300; I love the gorgeous golden light, but its cause is toxic.

So, I guess that part's the fridayfugly; the flowers are beautiful.