I needed a post for February before it ended. As always, there are lots of blog entries that I want to write, but I just don’t have the time or energy to write them.
I’m putting up this picture of an Eastern Musk Turtle (Sternotherus odoratus). They’re rarely seen because they spend most of their time underwater, but I found this one basking in Maryland in 2019.
I need to post something before January slips away, but I’ve had a hard time doing that, because this is the time of year when I feel that we should all be hibernating. (And very specifically I feel that I should be hibernating.) Speaking of which, here is something that gets to spend January in a torporous state, the Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus). It is the only species of lizard that is common in this area, and I have blogged about it many times before.
This individual is interesting in that it seems to be stuck in a state of awkward adolescent, showing both the blue tail of a juvenile and the red facial coloration of a mature male.
I needed something to post for Christmas, but I didn’t have anything, so I thought that I should just post this picture of a tadpole from 2019, but then I waited too late for Christmas.
But anyway, here is the Christmas tadpole. It’s either a Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) or a Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans). (I once read an explanation of how to tell the difference between the tadpoles of these two species by the distribution of black spots on the body, but I can’t seem to find that reference.)
And, in a way, this could be a Christmas tadpole; most other frog species start as eggs in the spring, and then change from tadpole to adult after a few months. But the Green Frog often spends a year in the tadpole stage, and in this area the Bullfrog spends two years as a tadpole, and thus there would be individuals of both species still in the tadpole stage as December comes to en end, which it is doing now.
Last fall I was blogging about the death of one of the musical icons of my youth, Ric Ocasek of the Cars, and now I must blog about the death of another, Eddie Van Halen, who died in October.
Eddie Van Halen was the main creative force in the band Van Halen. He is best known for his guitar playing, and in particular for bringing the technique of two-handed tapping to prominence within rock music.
It wasn’t Eddie’s guitar, though, that made me a fan of Van Halen. For on thing, I found his tone, on a purely sonic level, somewhat harsh and grating. (As I’ve gotten older I’ve found it less so, perhaps due to my ears losing sensitivity.) And, maybe more importantly, in my own attempts at playing the guitar, I lack anywhere near the level of skill to pull off the sort of trickery that he could do easily.
What really appealed to me about Eddie Van Halen’s music was his absolutely huge synthesizer sound, perhaps the “biggest” synth sound that anyone has ever produced. It was only employed on a handful of songs on a handful of albums in the Eighties. They’re not the Van Halen songs that it’s cool to like, but they’re the ones that influenced me.
Here is Van Halen’s biggest hit, and the first and perhaps best example of Eddie’s enormous synthesizer sound, just in case, for some bizarre reason, you’re not familiar with it.
Halloween is usually a time when I do a lot of blogging, because the spookiness of the season somehow inspires me. (If you want to explore this, just click the “Halloween” tag.) But I haven’t blogged this year, because, well . . . 2020.
For Halloween in 2017, 2018, and 2019 I wrote a series of posts critiquing the osteology of decorative plastic Halloween skeletons, My general sense is that, at this point, I’ve run out of types of skeletons to critique. But then, I haven’t really looked this year, because 1) I sensed that my readership had lost interest in the series by last year, and 2) well . . . 2020.
But then, are we even having Halloween this year? I’m unclear here. With respect to the child-oriented elements of the holiday, most specifically trick-or-treating, stores have aisles filled with Halloween candy just as always, but CDC guidelines seem to be ruling that trick-or-treating should be heavily restricted, if not considered outright unacceptable.
And what about the grown-up part of Halloween, which involves wearing costumes while partying? I saw on the television news that the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington will not be welcoming its usual adult Halloween crowd this year. Earlier in the year I had expected that the pandemic would be pretty much over by now, and people would be using Halloween as the perfect occasion to cut loose with a massive party. And Halloween is on a Saturday, which is the perfect day, because there’s no work or school, and no work or school the next day. And there’s even a full moon on Halloween this year, which (I guess?) is the most appropriate phase for the occasion. The only real problem, were we not in the midst of disease, would be that Halloween would be overshadowed by the rancor of the presidential election.
I addressed the question of delaying Halloween on the blog many years ago.
Maybe we can have two Halloweens next year.
And so, ultimately, well . . . 2020 . . .
Not much to say here . . . it’s a Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) . . . probably female . . . not at all uncommon in the world at large, but not the sort of thing that I normally see, especially standing calmly by a stream . . .
In my attempt to continue my nature photo series, and post something for August, I’m putting up a picture about which I won’t have to write much.
It’s just some foliage, and one can also see what looks like a little bit of lichen.
I don’t know how I came to take this picture. I might have hit the button on my camera by accident, or I might have been trying to photograph a bird that flew from the branch at the last moment.
But the picture is kind of nice . . . kind of peaceful . . . and very green . . .
