Cliff walk, Cape of Good Hope

An appropriate place, on a beautiful evening, to end the expedition....

Jackass Penguins, Boulders Beach, South Africa

awww....so cute...they are monogamous and can live for 25 years or more.

The African Penguin, or Jackass Penguin as it is known as because it brays like a donkey, lives an endangered life on the southern coastline of Africa.  This colony lives in Simon's Town on the Cape of Good Hope and appear unperturbed by people (as one might surmise given that they are often seen walking down the sidewalk).  The whales were just off-shore (kelp in foreground).

Fairy Circles. Who ya gonna call?

Midsummer Eve (1908) by pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Robert Hughes

A scientist!  A mystery is afoot, quite literally.  You may have read about it in the New York Times Science section recently – Namibian “Fairy Circles,” From Start to Finish.  Biologist Walter Tschinkel of Florida State University recently wrote a fascinating paper about the “life cycle” of strange spots that appear and eventually disappear on the surface of the Namibian desert.  He offers no explanation for the formation of these fairy circles but does debunk a few prior hypotheses including hydrocarbon seeps, termite colonies, or self-organized landscape features.

Namibian fairy circle (photo by Walter Tschinkel)

Namibian fairy circles photographed from the air by Michael Fay.

Tschinkel's paper did not consider the possibility that these circles could be caused by fungi, the cause of fairy rings seen elsewhere in the world (pic below)….maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see one?  A really nice history of fairy rings, and how they can kill local vegetation, can be found on Wikipedia.

Fairy ring on a suburban lawn

However, the mystery deepens with the “heuweltjies”, or “little hills”, of South Africa, located just south of Namibia.  We would drive for hours in South Africa through the polka-dotted landscape of the heuweltjies but, unlike further to the north, they are not flat but are mounds.  The accepted wisdom is that these are fossil termite mounds but I am skeptical, especially after reading Tschinkel’s study.  However, I also can’t imagine how fungi could build such large mounds.  I sampled sediment in and outside of the heuweltjies but when I realized I couldn't bring soil samples back to the U.S. I left the bags with a Cape Town graduate student, Eugene, in hopes that he'd be inspired to investigate further.  Mystery beckons, scientific glory awaits!

Heuweltjies north of Cape Town

More heuweltjies (look in middle distance)

Hogweed Bonking Beetles....

...in local parlance.  Officially known as common red soldier beetles who like to hang out and bonk on the hogweed in the Irish hedgerows (click to enlarge, parental guidance suggested).  I wonder why Morris never included insects in his wallpaper or fabric designs--they have a certain repetitive geometry and beauty.

A William Morris berry

My son took me on a sweet and challenging hike along a rocky ridge in the rolling Pennsylvania hills. A wild berry patch reminded me of this Bradbury & Bradbury "Morris Tradition" wallpaper.

Dolphins and flying fish off bow!

A large pod of dolphins with babies this afternoon!  They would leap out of water on our bow wave and land on their backs, generally looking like they were having a ball...

Unidentified sea creature

 Does anyone have any idea what this is?  It is organic, feels like hard rubbery plastic, and appears to have grown around a frond of soft coral.  It is also quite large for a weird-sea-creature.  I can't find anything even remotely like this in Reef Creature Identification by Paul Humann, my oceanside bible.

 (all click to enlarge)

Now that's what I call an x-ray!

yuk. yuk.  A new freshwater  "pancake" stingray discovered in the Amazon River.  More info and pics at Our Amazing Planet!

Wow! Tomorrow is a super-Moon!

(image compliments of NASA)

Time to grab the hand of your someone-special and go watch the moon-rise at sunset tomorrow.   From NASA: "On March 19th, a full Moon of rare size and beauty will rise in the east at sunset. It's a super "perigee moon"--the biggest in almost 20 years".   They give a nice explanation on the web site.

Barrier island walk

back at the Chat 'N' Chill...

Ode to the newly discovered squidworm

(Photo credit: Laurence Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

click to enlarge

And now, a newcomer, from the Celebes Sea,
The most curious beastie you're likely to see.
Teuthidodrilus samae, a segmented worm
with enough weird appendages to make anyone squirm.
What is it for -- all that tentacled foppery?
Evolution devising its own sort of moppery.

by Chet Raymo

Hummingbird nest

350.org Day

In addition to being Zombie Day, today is also the annual day of action for 350.org, when people at 7347 events in 188 countries work together to raise awareness of the global climate crisis.  You can follow the link to the web site and see inspiring pictures of what is going on all around the world today.  Here are Stockholm activists dressed up as the sun, wind, and water thanking people on the subway for choosing public transportation.

Here is my climate update:  On September 19, 10 days later then usual, Arctic sea ice reached its third lowest recorded extent (the two lower years were 2007 and 2008).  For the first time, two yachts, one from Russia and one from Norway, circumnavigated the Arctic Sea through the northeast (over Russia) and northwest (over Canada) passages in one season.  And they didn't even have to eat their boots.

A few days ago I was talking to a colleague whose recent trip to a research station in Greenland was canceled --- instead of flying in three scientists and one writer (Simon Winchester, I hear), the Greenland authorities sent four marksmen to protect the field researchers from marauding polar bears who normally would be far out on the sea ice hunting seal this time of year.  Of course, it is shoot to kill.

Could Andy Goldsworthy have passed this way?

My dad sent me this picture of a cairn they came across while hiking the remote wilds of western Ireland.  Very Goldsworthyesque!

Favorite Minerals of the South Australian Museum, Adelaide

Imagine my glee upon seeing this piece of the Mundrabilla Meteorite as the very first thing upon entering Adelaide's South Australian Museum!  You may remember it, and Mundrabilla, from this earlier post.  A fellow nerd pointed out later that I should have put a pencil down next to it for scale----it is about the size of a large coffee table, maybe just under two meters across.  It is an iron meteorite and this piece weighs about 2500kg.  It is one of the largest and most famous meteorites in the world.

While this is kind of like a librarian sorting books by color, it is so much more aesthetically pleasing than sorting by, say, lattice structure or chemical composition.  I'm sure this display has inspired many a budding geologist.

Amorphous silica in main stairwell.  Always beautiful.

Eyre Bird Observatory, Western Australia

In 1841 Edward John Eyre, age 26, with his companion John Baxter and three Aborigine guides, was on his way to becoming the first white person to walk across Australia, linking the colonial settlements in the east with the Swan River (Perth) colony on the west coast. After nearly 2000 km of arid hostile terrain and near death on the Nullabor Plain, they found life-saving water at a place later to become known as Eyre’s Sand Patch, later shortened to just Eyre. The party recuperated at this spot for four weeks before continuing westward, although Baxter’s trip, and life, were cut short two days later when he was murdered by two deserting Aborigines (whom I’m guessing he treated very poorly).

The Eyre Bird Observatory

Due to the presence of water and proximity to the coast (for provisioning by ship), in 1877 a repeater station for the Inter-Colonial Telegraph Line was established at Eyre, linking western Australia to the world (from the east, the telegraph line went north to Darwin, then to Indonesia, then on to Great Britain, the epicenter of the 19th century western world). William Morris was no doubt simultaneously sketching, writing, blocking, weaving, and painting back in the old country. Twenty years later, in 1897, a new station building, now home to the Eyre Bird Observatory, was constructed.

The Eyre Telegraph Station operated for fifty years, until 1927, when it was superceded by an inland line along the new Trans Australian Railway. In 1977 the ruined telegraph station was restored as a bird sanctuary and museum. Since that time, 245 species of birds have been observed at the EBO including rare Malleefowl, honeyeaters, penguins, silvereyes, and albatrosses.

 William Graham, first telegraph station master, 1877-1901, raised ten children in the bush.  Morris's lost antipodal twin?

We tried to visit the EBO last July (winter) but rain had made the track impassable. This year we were in luck (not withstanding a minor collision with a tree)---as we drove in at 9:30 in the morning, we were greeted by the volunteer caretaker, Roger McCallum. Within ten minutes of talking to Roger it was clear he was a naturalist and observer of the first-order. We described kind of rocks we were looking for and he gave us stellar bush directions to places miles away from the observatory.

Roger and Cheryl McCallum, caretakers

About five hours later we returned to the station and met Cheryl, his wife and co-caretaker. After a guided tour of the museum, we all sat down on the veranda for afternoon tea (including delicious home-made cookies and fresh fruit). While we were the only visitors that day, the EBO does offer rustic accommodations for $AU90 (~$US80) per night which includes all three meals as well as morning and afternoon tea. I reckon that’s a pretty amazing price for this slice of paradise. EBO is definitely on my “must-return-to” list (did I mention the glorious beach nearby?) and a great place to send a tax-deductible contribution.

 What a great stove...an Aga has nothing on this beauty!

Pump/Stop/Flood

Drawn on the wall above the kitchen door.....there are water tanks in the ceiling that obviously have floats, one for the shower(s) and one for the taps.  The weights on string tell you when to turn on the pump to fill the tanks.

Major Mitchell cockatoos

Outback Walk, Baxter Cliffs, South Australia

ahead

behind

In a few weeks vast numbers of Right whales will arrive to the base of these cliffs in the Australian Bight from their summer home in Antarctica but last week all I saw were dolphins.  Rock-Whisperer, Map-Wizard, and myself are back in land of cell phones so posts should be more regular now---stay tuned for road-houses of the Nullabor!

Happy Earth Day!

Weekend Warriors

It's springtime in New England and that means lots of action among our animal brethren.  I was not four blocks into a walk last evening when I encountered what can only be described as a major "preen-fest" between two huge turkeys trying to impress a seemingly blase troop of six females.  It was like watching a poultry version of the "Walk-off" scene in Zoolander.

Turkey #1 (in the street) was so puffed up he looked massive and he dragged his striped wing feathers along the ground such that it sounded like stiff cardboard being dragged along the road.  He also seems to have created some kind of weird chest ornamentation for himself (all the better to impress the ladies!).

Mean while on a nearby lawn Turkey #2 appears to have most of the gals in his harem.  Only one is near T1 and I think that is just because she got accidentally separated on the wrong side of the fence.  The old "divide-and-conquer" strategy no doubt.

 Turkey 2

 back to Turkey 1

"Don't go back to that moldy pile of pin feathers!  What does he have that I don't?  Look at this chest!"

Keep in mind this is going on in the street of a city of 90,000 people, possibly even in front of children (should any be lucky enough to actually be outside playing).  After twenty minutes I got restless and continued on to a small pond in nearby Boston.

As I arrived ten minutes later it was clear that another major avian rivalry was underway.  A white swan was on a rampage, terrorizing, intimidating, and pursuing a flock of Canada geese who apparently also felt a desire to swim/nest/congregate in this particular pond.  I needn't tell you how un-swanlike this behavior was....in fact, this swan was swimming after individual geese so quickly it was like watching the galleys going "ramming speed" in Ben Hur.

look at that wake!

At this point my camera battery died so I did not get the shots of the swan literally running across the top of the water with wings spread as wide as they could go, his neck fully extended, and making loud (and again, very un-swanlike) guttural noises.  I eventually had to depart even though the action showed no sign of abating.  I left content in the knowledge that there is actually a creature is the world that can intimidate a Canada goose.

Finally, on a different subject, here is my newly cleaned and reglazed window I bought on Craig's List from a contractor who was demolishing a house in my town.  Look at that glazing job!  Uncle Joe, you taught me well......