Baby Time!

Hi Everyone,
It seems to be baby time at Reptilia right now, and not just any old babies either! Earlier last week on January 1st we said hello to 14 baby green anacondas! For those of you who don't know, green anaconda's give live birth! They're also the heaviest snake species in the world, growing to 550 pounds! (227kg)

"Anacondas live in swamps, marshes, and slow-moving streams, mainly in the tropical rain forests of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. They are cumbersome on land, but stealthy and sleek in the water. Their eyes and nasal openings are on top of their heads, allowing them to lay in wait for prey while remaining nearly completely submerged." (http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/green-anaconda/)
Here's a photo of one of the little babies!

(Credit; Reptilia)

"Baby snakes are about 2 feet (0.6 meters) long when they are born and are almost immediately able to swim and hunt. Their lifespan in the wild is about ten years."

If that wasn't exciting enough, on Sunday our Monkey Tailed Skink also gave birth! Again, these lizards give live birth, and this time the mother and all the colony are fiercely protective of the little baby! Here's a photo of the mother (top right) watching her little baby (Bottom left) explore his new home. :D

                                                                     (Credit; Reptilia)

The Monkey Tailed Skink (Also known as the Solomon Islands Skink) is an arboreal species of Skink native to the Solomon Islands. 
It "is completely herbivorous, eating many different fruits and vegetables. It is one of the few species of reptile known to function within a social group or "circulus".  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Islands_skink)

I'll try and keep you updated as they grow older! :D
Chris

Bird Counting

Hi everyone!

Yesterday (Saturday) I joined a group of bird experts to count birds for the Annual Christmas Bird Count. Thousands of volunteers all across the Americas are counting birds over the Christmas Vacation to help scientists spot changes and trends in the bird populations. For more information about the Bird Count, go to http://www.onrichmondhill.com/events.php?id=16328

The day started at 8am, and we all headed off to our first location. It was still quite dark when we spotted our first birds, so I apologize for the grainy photos, but it was the best I could do. It turned out to be quite a gray day and we spent a lot of time in woods so the conditions don't improve much, but it was just so much fun I thought I'd share it with you anyways. 

Here's what we saw;

10 Redpoll Finches

"Common Redpolls are small songbirds with small heads and small, pointed, seed-eating bills. The tail is short with a small notch at the tip." (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Redpoll/id)

"Traveling in flocks of up to several hundred individuals, they move south irregularly in winter following patterns in food supply. Along with Pine Siskins they are among the best known finches to do this."

90 Pine Siskins

I know what your all thinking, "you actually counted every single one??" Well we did our best. These guys really didn't want to sit still! But I have a photo of one tree. Go on, count if you want! There was two other tree's as well!!! The Redpoll's are mixed in here somewhere as well.....

 "Pine siskins are brown and very streaky birds with subtle yellow edgings on wings and tails. Flashes of yellow can erupt as they take flight, flutter at branch tips, or display during mating" (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pine_Siskin/id)

"They cling to branch tips of pines and other conifers, sometimes hanging upside down to pick at seeds below them. They are gregarious, foraging in tight flocks and twittering incessantly to each other"

"Pine Siskins get through cold winter nights by increasing their metabolic rates — typically 40% higher than a “normal” songbird of their size."

2 little birds, sitting on a twig.....or not....grin. 

14 American Goldfinches

5 Red Tailed Hawks
10 American Tree Sparrows
2 Chickadees
139 Mallards - and yes we did count every single one that time!

"Ducks are strong fliers; migrating flocks of Mallards have been estimated travelling at 55 miles per hour. The standard duck’s quack is the sound of a female Mallard. Males don’t quack; they make a quieter, rasping sound." (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mallard/lifehistory)

96 Gulls - 85 of them were Ring-Billed Gulls, the rest we're not certain. 

"Many, if not most, Ring-billed Gulls return to breed at the colony where they hatched. Once they have bred, they are likely to return to the same breeding spot each year, often nesting within a few meters of the last year's nest site. Many individuals return to the same wintering sites each winter too." (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/ring-billed_gull/lifehistory)

3 Cardinals
121 Canadian Geese - plus about 500.....

 If your wondering about the "plus about 500", the photos below should explain...

*Several minutes later*

Yup they just kept coming...

2 Kestrels

"North America’s littlest falcon, the American Kestrel is one of the most colourful of all raptors: the male’s slate-blue head and wings contrast elegantly with his rusty-red back and tail; the female has the same warm reddish on her wings, back, and tail." (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_Kestrel/id)

"Hunting for insects and other small prey in open territory, kestrels perch on wires or poles, or hover facing into the wind, flapping and adjusting their long tails to stay in place. Kestrels are declining in parts of their range; you can help them by putting up nest boxes."

1 Sharp Shined Hawk

37 Starlings

1 Rock Dove

2 Morning Doves

1 American Crow

A pretty awesome list huh? We also saw this tree while we were hiking in one of the woods. A vine had grown around it restricting it's growth and "carving" it into this amazing sculpture!

This is the vine wrapped around the tree

And this is the result!

Cool huh? All just proves that nature doesn't just disappear during the wintertime, you just have to get outside and look! Why don't you all go for a stroll outside sometime this week and see what you can find? You'd be surprised how much there is! Be patient though, sometimes you have to wait for it to appear. 

Have a great week,

Chris

The woods went 3D!!!

Hello everyone!
Recently in photography class we learnt how movie makers used the colours of Red and Bluish/Green and the way our brain merges what it sees through our left and right eyes to create "3D" movies (now they actually do it differently but if you remember when the 3D glasses had the two colours for the eye pieces, this is why.) We used this knowledge to create our very own 3D photos! If you have any of those red+blue 3D glasses, put them on now!

So here's how you do it.
1. Take a photo of something that has good depth to it (somethings are far away, others are close up)
2. Without moving you head, move the camera to your other eye and take another photo
3. Go into photoshop and open both photos up
4. Label which one is the right eye and which one is the left.
5. Drag the right image onto the left and make the opacity about 60%
6. Align the two images at a point. This point will be "page level" anything closer will appear to jump out, anything farther away will apear to be pushed back
7. Return the opacity to 100%
8. Select the left layer.
9. Go to Channel
10. click "red"
11.  Hold down "Ctrl+A" Then copy.
12. click "RBG"
13. Now go to the right layer
14. go to channel
15. click "red"
16. Paste you selection
17. Click "RBG"
18. Put on your 3D glasses and see if it worked!

Have a great day!
Chris

Dissections

Hi everyone,

We're just finishing up our Biology Unit in Science class, and I thought it might be an appropriate time to show you some of the things we've been doing. This unit it largely review of what we learned in grade 8 about cells, tissues, organs and organ systems, (although it does go into some greater detail) but it's made more interesting by a large selection of Dissections. I always have slightly mixed feeling about these; on one hand I'm eager to learn more about the animal, and I love "hands on" things, but on the other hand I do feel very sorry for the animal, especially if it's an animal I know well. For example, the frog dissection we did this year was probably the hardest of the four, because I immediately recognized the frog to be a Northern Leopard Frog, which any of you who follow this blog will know I have been doing a study on. At the end of the day, I try to assure myself that by kids (and myself) dissecting these animals, they gain knowledge that perhaps helps them to respect these animals the wild counterparts better. After all, I don't think many of my classmates will look at a frog in quite the same way, now they have seen first hand just how similar they are to us humans.

As a project we had to make collages showing photos of the Respiratory and Digestive systems of the 4 different animals we dissected (fish, frog, grasshopper and worm). I thought I'd post them here. I'm sizing them quite small on the page here, so that if your comfortable you can click on them to see the larger images, if not, simply skip this post. 

Have a great day,

Chris

sorry about the delay!

Hi everyone,
Sorry I haven't posted here for a really long time, I've so busy! I'm deciding that I'm going to broaden the topic of the blog so that I have more to talk about, especially in the winter time when most animals are bidding away. I have a photography class this semester, so I'll be posting some of the assignments that I do in that class too - although they're not exactly related to nature. I'll show you some of the ones I've done later when I have the photos.
Sorry again about the gap, hope you don't mind
Rebecca

A Mole in a Hole

 

 (Credit:  http://www.animalspot.net/star-nosed-mole.html)

Yesterday I was at the gliding club, but due to thunderstorms on the radar there wasn't much flying going on. Instead I was busy looking around for any wildlife that might be hidding. Origionally I was trying to find out what snakes might be in the area, but typically you never find what your looking for. I lifted up this large planting tray of flowers to see what was underneath, and found this small blackish mouse like creature. At first that's what I thought it was - a mouse, but when it turned around I had to laugh out loud - it had this huge pink starfish like nose! I knew instantly what it was - a Star Nosed Mole!! 

 

"The star-nosed mole is a small mole found in wet low areas of eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States. Star-nosed moles are easily identified by the eleven pairs of pink fleshy appendages ringing their snout which are used as a touch organ with more than 25,000 minute sensory receptors, known as Eimer's organs, with which this hamster-sized mole feels its way around. Because the star-nosed mole is functionally blind, it had long been suspected that the snout was used to detect electrical activity in prey animals, though little, if any, support has been found for this hypothesis.^{" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star-nosed_mole)}

(Credit: http://www.mnh.si.edu/mna/full_image.cfm?image_id=1879)

"The star-nosed mole lives in wet lowland areas and eats small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms and mollusks. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging; often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is active day and night and remains active in winter, when it has been observed tunneling through the snow and swimming in ice-covered streams. "

 

 (Credit: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/underwater-sniffs/)

"The star-nosed mole mates in late winter or early spring, and the female has one litter of typically 4 or 5 young in late spring or early summer. However, females are known to have a second litter if their first is unsuccessful. At birth, each offspring is about 5 cm long, hairless, and weighs about 1.5 g. Their eyes, ears, and star are all sealed, only opening and becoming useful approximately 14 days after birth. They become independent after about 30 days, and are fully mature after 10 months."

Cool huh? Looks like it's den is under there - lot's of holes in and out, so maybe I'll see it lots? :D

That's all for now, 

Chris

I spy with my little eye....(and a NCC contest!)

Spotting wildlife isn't always as easy as you may think...in fact, most of the time it actually feels more like a little game of Eye Spy! Let's see how you'd do...


Just a whole lot of dirt right??

Are you sure??

Think again! Here's a little baby American Toad!

 What about this?? Random grasses?

So did you spot these two Green Darner Dragonflies mating? 

Come on now, you've GOT to see this one! 

PLEASE tell me you didn't miss this beautiful Black Swallow-Tail Butterfly!

Other animals such as this Garter Snake are fairly easy to spot as long as you know where to look

Better be quick with the Camera though because they're very skittish and will dart off as soon as you expose them most times.

There is of course, an easier way to see the amazing and stunningly beautiful diversity of living things, if this wild goose chase isn't your sort of thing - the zoo! 

This summer, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is partnering with the Toronto Zoo to give you a chance to see some of Canada’s (and the world’s) coolest species up close!

Just fill in the contest form @ 

http://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/what-you-can-do/promotions/toronto-zoo-2012.html 

To win one of two possible prizes!

1) A symbolic grizzly bear adoption kit! As a Zoo ‘parent’, you’ll receive a Certificate of Adoption with a colour picture of a Toronto Zoo grizzly, an acknowledgement card, an animal fact sheet, newsletters and recognition on the Zoo’s Parents' Board Wall.

2) One of 2 pairs of Toronto Zoo passes to visit Canada’s premier Zoo. Your free admission includes access to all pavilions, exhibits and daily shows (excluding any separately ticketed events, rides, exhibits and parking).

Cool huh? Well, whether it's at a zoo like the Toronto Zoo, or just outside playing that old game of Eye Spy, I challenge you to go spot some wildlife this week, have fun, and don't forget to come back here and tell us what you saw! 

Chris