Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video is called Socotra Yemen Heaven On Earth.

From BirdLife:

03-07-2008

The Yemen Council of Ministers has recently approved the Golden-winged Grosbeak as Yemen’s national bird. This colourful bird, with a huge beak for eating fruits and seeds, occurs in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen.

Yemen has also chosen the Arabian Leopard Panthera pardus nimr as the national mammal, the Dragon Blood Tree Dracaena cinnabari as the national tree, and the Aloe Aloe irafensis as the national plant.

This is a video of dragonfly and damselfly photographs by Mark Plonsky.

Today, to the white stork nest near the nature reserve. On the nest, one adult and one black-billed juvenile standing; two juveniles sitting. On the meadow below, a grey heron.

At the small pond in the reserve, I meet a dragonfly photographer. A female black-tailed skimmer and a Norfolk hawker fly past.

Also a butterfly: a dingy skipper. And a hoverfly species, looking like a bumblebee: Volucella bombylans.

We talk about green woodpeckers, said to have two nesting couples in this reserve this year. A bit further along the path, a robin; then, a song thrush.

In the castle pond, most damselflies may look like blue-tailed damselflies; however, not all of them are. The ones with red eyes which like to sit on water lily leaves, are red-eyed damselflies. The blue-eyed ones which prefer to sit on bank plants are blue-tailed damselflies.

Also, a large red damselfly.

A blackcap sings.

Norfolk hawkers fly around; sometimes quarreling about territory; offering many photo opportunities.

From a branch hanging over the water, a spotted flycatcher hunts for insects. I had not seen this species here for years.

Two adult coots with still very young chicks.

On pebbles near a bench, a male black-tailed skimmer sits down. In the meadow, a northern lapwing and a black-tailed godwit. Later, an Egyptian goose flying. Still later, a black-tailed godwit, standing on a pole.

This is a video of two black-necked grebes in the Netherlands.

Within Meijendel nature reserve, there is a specially protected area called Kikkervalleien. It is open the public only for one day a year, usually in June. This year, that one day was today.

Before arriving there: two adult black swans with young, near the Valkenburgse meer.

Immediately after the Kikkervalleien entrance: two black-necked grebes swimming.

On ragwort plants, black and yellow striped caterpillars. They are caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth.

Flowers of vipers’ bugloss; Viola curtisii; southern marsh-orchid.

A lady working for the nature reserve shows us a very young natterjack toad, which was a tadpole not long ago. Also many still very small common frogs. Later, also an adult common toad there. There are also invertebrates in the water here, including great pond snails.

The nature reserve empoyee also names the many flowers close to the water here: rattle; common milkwort; fairy flax; water mint.

A bit higher, not so close to the water: scarlet pimpernel flowers.

Flora of Flevoland province: here.

On a fence sits a male stonechat; see also here.

Many great cormorants flying overhead.

On the water’s edge of a small shallow dune lake, many very small common frogs. Swimming in the water: their brothers and sisters, still in the tadpole phase.

A bit higher, in the dunes: star gentian flowers.

When we get back to the entrance, a black-necked grebe swimming at the same spot where we have seen it earlier.

This video from Germany is called White Stork family: 03-06-2007, nest Bornheim 1.

On my way to the nature reserve today, a singing reed warbler.

At the white stork nest, three juveniles: one standing, two sitting. The parents are below the nest, looking for food on the meadow. Also an oystercatcher is there.

At the castle pond, blue tailed damselflies on water lily leaves.

At the eastern meadow: barn swallows and a grey heron flying. On the ground, oystercatchers and a wood pigeon.

Along the path to the west of the castle pond, it is a good year for orange hawkweed. Over a hundred of them are flowering. A male black-tailed skimmer dragonfly sitting down on the path.

This video from the USA is called California Poppies in the Antelope Valley.

From the University of California - Riverside in the USA:

California’s wildflowers are disappearing, new book by UCR ecologist cautions

Richard Minnich says policies and measures are needed to preserve state’s flower heritage

Richard Minnich is a professor of geography in the Department of Earth Sciences at UC Riverside.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – At least since the late 18th century, invasive plant species introduced by humans have devastated California’s botanical heritage by destroying native flora, resulting in bad pastures and posing a fire hazard, a new book by a UC Riverside ecologist explains.

“We need to recognize that California was not at all grasslands in the past,” said Richard Minnich, the author of California’s Fading Wildflowers, published this month by the University of California Press. “In the late eighteenth century, land all the way from San Francisco to San Diego was carpeted by wildflower pastures. Today these pastures have vanished, with brome grass taking their place.” …

From entries about California’s vegetation recorded by Franciscan missionaries and soldiers (1769-1776), Minnich determined that the landscape was covered with wildflower fields in the late 18th century, and that these pastures thrived especially well along the coast.

He reports in the book on how during the Gold Rush in the middle of the 19th century (1840 to 1880) non-Hispanic Europeans – American, French and British explorers –introduced European plants such as clovers, filerie, black mustard and wild oats that initiated the alteration of California’s landscape.

“These non-native plants invaded the state’s coastal areas,” said Minnich, a professor of geography in the Department of Earth Sciences. “But inland, the natives continued to thrive and wildflowers continued to grow.”

But then, from 1880 until the present, bromes, a new suite of invaders, took hold and spread rapidly in California, Minnich argues. “Newspaper articles and books from this period report that the bromes exploded throughout the state,” he said. “Unlike the plants the Franciscans introduced, these bromes spread into the interior of California and replaced the wildflowers there.”

His research for the book helped him determine that the bromes replaced the wildflowers in Los Angeles in the 1940s; in Riverside, Calif., in 1965; in southern San Joaquin Valley in the mid-1960s; and throughout the deserts of California in the 1970s and 1980s.

“California was a flower pasture once but in the past fifty years the flowers made their final collapse right in front of our eyes,” he said. “Today, the wildflower situation in the state is bad. You hardly see them, and, when you do, they appear in patches here and there, not as meadows that once characterized the state.”

According to Minnich, California wildflowers are also a “lost legacy.” He argues that wildflowers were appreciated by the generations of the late 19th century: they were the topic of books and were institutionalized in floral societies that sprung up in all the local towns and weekend flower parties.

“The New Year’s Rose Parade in Pasadena was the institutional outcome of the combined forces of southern California’s floral societies,” he said.

Right now, there is an open air exhibition of work by Zimbabwean sculptor Dominic Benhura in the botanical garden.

61 sculptures by this artist are on show.

Humans in various, mostly stylized, forms are the main subject.

However, Dominic Benhura also uses animals and plants as subjects.

They include a crab in springstone.

And a beetle; its body in springstone, and the six spots on its back in cobalt stone.

The sculpture Paired for life shows two cranes.

Another sculpture shows a spitting cobra.

Sculptures showing fish stand close to ponds.

The sculptures Sisal and Flowering are about plants.

This video is called Solitary bee just emerged and taking first flight.

From the American Museum of Natural History:

Bee species outnumber mammals and birds combined

Newly completed checklists from the American Museum of Natural History highlight the importance of these pollinators

Scientists have discovered that there are more bee species than previously thought. In the first global accounting of bee species in over a hundred years, John S. Ascher, a research scientist in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, compiled online species pages and distribution maps for more than 19,200 described bee species, showcasing the diversity of these essential pollinators. This new species inventory documents 2,000 more described, valid species than estimated by Charles Michener in the first edition of his definitive The Bees of the World published eight years ago.

“The bee taxonomic community came together and completed the first global checklist of bee names since 1896,” says Ascher. “Most people know of honey bees and a few bumble bees, but we have documented that there are actually more species of bees than of birds and mammals put together.”

The list of bee names finished by Ascher and colleagues was placed online by John Pickering of the University of Georgia through computer applications that linked all names to Discover Life species pages, a searchable taxonomic classification for all bees, and global maps for all genera and species. Ascher and colleagues recently reviewed all valid names from his checklist and from those of experts from all over the world for the World Bee Checklist project led by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and available online (www.itis.gov).

The bee checklists were developed as a key component of the Museum’s Bee Database Project initiated in 2006 by Ascher and Jerome G. Rozen, Jr., Curator of bees at the Museum, and with technical support from Curator Randall Schuh. A primary goal of this project is to document floral and distributional records for all bees, including now obscure species that may someday become significant new pollinators for our crops. The vast majority of known bee species are solitary, primitively social, or parasitic.

These bees do not make honey or live in hives but are essential pollinators of crops and native plants. Honey is made by nearly 500 species of tropical stingless bees in addition to the well-known honey bee Apis mellifera. Honey bees are the most economically important pollinators and are currently in the news because of colony collapse disorder, an unexplained phenomenon that is wiping out colonies throughout the United States.

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The crises facing traditionally managed pollinators like honey bees highlight the need for more information about bee species and their interactions with the plants they pollinate. The National Academy of Sciences identified improved taxonomic data on bees as a high priority, and the new online bee checklists, maps, and other databases have for the first time made comprehensive data readily accessible. The checklists compiled by Ascher and colleagues facilitate ongoing databasing of the Museum’s worldwide collections of more than 400,000 bee specimens, research that was possible due to the generous support of Robert G. Goelet, Chairman Emeritus of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. The Discover Life bee checklist can be accessed at www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Apoidea_species. The valid names in this checklist were peer-reviewed as a contribution to the World Bee Checklist (www.itis.gov), a just-completed project coordinated by Michael Ruggiero of the Integrated Taxonomic Information System at the Smithsonian Institution, with technical support by David Nicolson of ITIS. The World Bee Checklist Project and development of collaborative tools for a planned dynamic catalog received funding from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). For additional credits, see here.

This video from New Zealand is called Moa Footprints.

From Science Daily:

New Zealand’s Colonization 1000 Years Later Than Previously Thought?

ScienceDaily (Jun. 4, 2008) — The dating project, in one of the largest studies of its kind, has shown that the country was not visited by humans over 2000 years ago, as some previous research suggests.

An international team of researchers, led by Dr Janet Wilmshurst from Landcare Research, spent 4 years on the project which shows conclusively that the earliest evidence for human colonisation is about 1280-1300 AD, and no earlier. They based their results on new radiocarbon dating of Pacific rat bones and rat-gnawed seeds. Their results do not support previous radiocarbon dating of Pacific rat bones which implied a much earlier human contact about 200 BC.

The original old rat bones dates have been hotly debated ever since they were published in Nature in 1996. The ages are controversial because there is no supporting ecological or archaeological evidence for the presence of kiore or humans until 1280-1300 AD and the reliability of the bone dating has been questioned. This is the first time that the actual sites involved in the original study have been re-excavated and analyzed.

Dr Wilmshurst and her team researchers re-excavated and re-dated bones from nearly all of the previously investigated sites. All of their new radiocarbon dates on kiore bones are no older than 1280 AD. This is consistent with other evidence from the oldest dated archaeological sites, Maori whakapapa, widespread forest clearance by fire and a decline in the population of marine and land-based fauna.

“As the Pacific rat or kiore cannot swim very far, it can only have arrived in New Zealand with people on board their canoes, either as cargo or stowaways. Therefore, the earliest evidence of the Pacific rat in New Zealand must indicate the arrival of people” Dr Wilmshurst said.

This video from the USA is called The Banana Slug String Band-Dirt Made My Lunch.

From the BioBliz Blog in the USA:

It’s official: The 24-hour Santa Monica Mountains inventory has come to an end, but the party’s just beginning!

Teams turned up 1,364 unique plant and animal species by noon today–more than twice the hoard volunteers ID’d in the same time at Rock Creek Park last year. More still will come in the days ahead as bio-sleuths resolve the identities of a slew of mystery species.

For now, at least, the breakdown looks like this:

Algae - 22
Amphibian - 4
Arthropod - 628
Bird - 86
Fish - 6
Lichen - 3
Mammal - 12
Marine Invertebrate - 91
Other Invertebrate - 2
Plant - 495
Reptile - 15

TOTAL - 1364

The Celebrate Biodiversity Festival’s in full swing, with the Banana Slug String Band on the main stage.

In this video by a European reptile enthusiast

A small and harmless smooth snake attacks my hand.

In 2007, various rare plants and animals were observed in nature reserves in the Netherlands.

They included:

- Whiskered bats. 11 of them in Fort Spijkerboor

- Yellow centaury: 20 to 30 flowering on Schiermonnikoog island

- Smooth snakes are back in the Bergherbos; four were seen at the same time

- Great reed warblers are back as a breeding species in Eemland

- Great egret: over a hundred birds sleeping in Botshol

- Great crested newt: in nearly all ponds in Op Hees

- Silver washed fritillary: July 3 in Zuid-Kennemerland

- Little crake and little bittern: rare marsh birds, seen in new nature reserve near Harderbroek

- Eurasian treecreeper: 2 couples in the Haagse Bos

- Middle spotted woodpecker: in 2007, 10 to 12 couples were breeding in five areas in Twente

- Inundated clubmoss: in the Damlanderpolder

- Slime mould: a new species for the Netherlands, found on a beech tree in Enzerinck

- Scarce blue-tailed damselfly: seen at Berkenbosje near Haarzuilens

- Water shrew: in Tienhovense Plassen

- Golden samphire: found on the Wadden sea island Griend (in 2006, seen for the first time in the Netherlands, at Kwade Hoek)

- Sea eagle: 2 young birds for over 2 months in Zuid-Kennemerland

- Stripe-winged grasshopper: was seen and heard in the Velhorst

Source: report on 2007 of Dutch conservation organization Natuurmonumenten.

Butterlies in the Netherlands, spring 2008: here.