More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Scanning old slides brings back good memories. Almost 25 yrs ago spent 90 minutes watching this California kingsnake eating a big garter snake on the side of a pond in Napa County, CA.

I’ve been volunteering at my local park. We are currently in the magical 3 weeks each year when you can take cuttings from mature plants and re-plant them and they’ll root! It’s easy and a free way to restore areas previously overrun with invasive species or to replant stands of dead trees.

83F already and the garden Western fence lizards are running around all over the place and taking their rightful places on the rocks where they can survey their kingdoms.

Sharp-tailed Grouse launch pad (my subsequent 'heart-attack' not depicted 😂) #birds

Lots of wood frog breeding in northeast Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday this past week.

I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent. State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes. www.wired.com/story/gramma...

Unisexual Ambystoma salamander from Ohio seen today with more than half of her tail regenerated. It may have been bitten off in a previous year by a predator like a raccoon. With a little time and energy investment, she grew it back.

Fence effect snow

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers. The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26) Directorates to follow 1/10

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

when people ask "what's the wildest thing you've ever pulled out of a sewer?" i'm going to just start answering "tree."

PBS News Hour: U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents describe how they were treated. Watch the segment here www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMgC... I'm clipping transcripts of the citizens speaking in this thread 1/3

It’s been a cold, snowy winter here in Cleveland. In 2923 and 2024, we caught our first salamanders around February 10th. I am now wondering if we won’t see them until late March this year? What’s your guess?

I am excited to share my new book, California Amphibians and How To Find Them, hot off the press from Heyday Books and ready to help guide your wet winter frog and salamander adventures! It is available now from my website or Feb 3 at bookstores. www.centralcoastsnakeservices.com/shop.html

Friends, could you take a moment to sign this open letter about a proposal to illuminate the Earth during the night with giant orbital systems. This would be incredibly disruptive to nearly all North American songbirds who migrate at night. darksky.org/news/orbital...

Happy Winter Solstice! Beer can, pinhole camera photos of the Summer to Winter Solstice (2024) and the Winter to Summer Solstice (2025). You never know quite what you're going to get with these photos, set the beer can pointing towards the sun at hopefully the correct angle and wait 6 months!

Happy Winter! 10:03am ET today marked the Winter Solstice, the day of the year when the Earth's northern hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the Sun – making today the shortest of the year for those of us north of the equator. Will wintry temperatures be in your area? 😬 Visit weather.gov to see

The best part about amphibian season is touching all the things. California Tiger Salamander, handled with appropriate permits. #herps

It is also grossly ironic to use faulty data to cut the statistics program. www.dailynebraskan.com/news/unl-use...

It's over. Despite the fact that the academic council recommended against it, despite the fact that the program brought in more tuition than it cost, and despite the fact that Nebraskans need & deserve this expertise, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences will be cut. www.dailynebraskan.com/news/adminis...

Talipot palms in a Rio de Janeiro park are flowering for the first and only time in their lives.

Can you teach human anatomy - or know someone who can? CWRU Anatomy is recruiting, and it would be great to have another paleontologist in the department! More info and application: apply.interfolio.com/151831 Please share widely! @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social

#FrogFriday > BlackFriday - Here's a male Uakari Poison Frog (Ranitomeya uakarii) hauling two of its tadpoles to a location with permanent water, where they can continue development. Rainforest in the Rio Tahuayo drainage north of Iquitos, Peru. #herps #frogs #NaturePhotography 🌿

When a meal fights back! I’ve only gotten distant looks at Yellow-crowned Night-heron adults, delighted to find one close! It’s trying to eat a crab but the crab’s got its beak pinched. Super compressed video quickly moved to my phone from my camera (sorry!) just too excited to wait to share

🚨 HELP NEEDED!!! Please, help us to evaluate how differences in aesthetic perception can affect the development of conservation strategies in #butterflies. www.unveiling.eu/en_US/

Since BlueSky seems to like (or dislike enough to hit "like") snakes, here's my favorite photo of a snake I've taken: A smooth green snake knots its tail in a last-ditch effort to avoid being consumed by a garter snake. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, CO. #photography #snake 🐍

Finished page from THE DISSIDENTS. I'm putting the last touches on this bad boy. It'll be in the can by Thanksgiving! What a relief. Out in Fall 2026, y'all.

A few of you will recognize this as an homage to the Otto Dix painting, Streetfight, from 1927. Dix was witness to the battle in Berlin. The Freikorps, of course, morphed into the Nazi Party. It's an astounding painting, tragically destroyed during WW2, either on a Nazi bonfire or by bombs.

Baby Redback Salamander next to an Adult Redback Salamander. Plethodon cinereus. These are lungless, direct-developing salamanders. The babies skip the aquatic larval stage and upon hatching are completely terrestrial salamanders like miniature adults.

Revolting.

Visiting family in the mountains of South Carolina, encountered these large, invasive joro spiders for the first time. Some spots were thick with their webs spread between trees.

I'm a little achy, feverish and listless from a Covid vax, so I'm just processing photos tonight. For #FrogFriday here's an African Clawed Frog (Xenopus laevis), observed in SE Free State, South Africa. Note the upturned eyes, perfect for laying in shallow water. #herps #frogs #NaturePhotography 🌿

Tonight! act.gorgefriends.org/a/rattlesnakes

BEHOLD the GARgantuan Alligator Gar!!! This is the largest Alligator Gar I’ve encountered; at over 7 feet 10 inches (240 cm) and approximately 55 inches in girth, its weight is estimated at 300 pounds (136 kg)! A true river monster, among the largest caught, tagged and safely released! #GarWeek

Cooper's Hawk vs. Eastern Gray Squirrel Spoiler: Squirrel gets away. Lake County, IL 10.20.25 #coopershawk #graysquirrel #backyardwildlife #trailcam #trailcamera

Wonderful visit to Holden Arboretum yesterday. My phone video can’t capture the amazing feeling from the emergent tower above tree canopy (120 feet / 37 meters above the ground. Well worth a visit for those in northeast Ohio! holdenfg.org/attractions/...

New: a $60 mod to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses disables the privacy LED light. This is supposed to light when people are filming with the glasses. We bought the mod, verified it works. Now you can never be sure whether someone wearing Meta Ray-Bans is filming you or not www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

Update on the Paleontological Research Institution and their remaining need for donations to pay off their mortgage and avoid foreclosure #savePRI please share; tag anyone you think might help🧪⚒️🦑 @lastweektonight.com @colbertlateshow.bsky.social @pbseons.bsky.social www.ithaca.com/news/regiona...

Just look at the reductions to the USGS science centers in this document. An 80% reduction in staff is all the scientists. The only people left will be admin and IT staff who will be needed to shutdown the centers. The writing is on the wall for all other EMA science centers…

A tale in four photos… This Green Heron took about 5 minutes to swallow this poor little frog! 🐸 Interestingly, the heron kept dipping the frog in water and rotating it so that the frog was facing the throat before swallowing it whole 😱

New from CWRU alumn Troy Neptune, with Diana Koester (CLE Metroparks Zoo) in @animalecology.bsky.social. Gray treefrogs use daylength as a seasonal cue to prepare for winter. Autumn daylength triggers frogs to accumulate 14-fold more liver glycogen than summer photoperiod. doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Two little creatures found cohabitating under a log today. A common shiny woodlouse and a redback salamander. Northeast Ohio.

Loved visiting the recreated wunderkammer or "cabinet of curiosities’ at the Houston Museum of Natural Science today. I always wondered what it was like to stroll through these early natural history collections so eclectically curated. Also couldn’t resist a coelacanth selfie.

Baird's Ratsnake (Pantherophis bairdi) eating a bat! Val Verde County, Texas. #herps #predation #snakes

A broader view of that storm cloud and rainbow reaching toward the lone tree.