I always assumed that there existed at least a few immutable truths about the natural world, dogmas that had no exceptions, no matter how hard you looked for them. One of them, I thought, was the rule that flies, which cartoons and children books made me believe were the favorite food of frogs, should be…
Month: July 2013
Hanging in there
Things have been keeping me away from updating the blog, but I finally found a moment to write about one cool animal that usually shows up at this time of year in Massachusetts – the scorpionfly (Panorpa). Or at least that was the original plan. Since I had, literally, only one, rather lousy shot of this…
A portrait of a marine iguana
Sharlena Wood, a Canadian artist whose beautiful paintings have already been featured on this blog (here and here), did it again. Using a charcoal drawing technique she produced an outstanding portrait of a marine iguana by imaginatively reinterpreting one of my photos from the Galapagos Islands. This drawing is part of a series of portraits…
Helmeted katydids
Porgera, a gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, is not a pleasant place for a biologist, especially if you are aware of the massive environmental damage of its operations, or the frequent human right violations that this mining camp is known for. But we had no choice but to sleep with the…
New life
Today marks the first anniversary of The Smaller Majority blog which, to my delight and surprise, has been steadily gaining readership. I am grateful to all who visited these pages over the last 12 months, especially those who kindly left the wonderful, insightful, occasionally snarky comments under many of the 130+ individual stories – keep’em…
Night callers
At first I didn’t know what woke me up. The night was silent and nothing but a faint warble of tree crickets could be heard outside my tent. For a few of minutes I just lay there, foggily trying to figure out what disturbed my sleep but soon started to drift off. Suddenly, there it…
The Smaller Majority 