What do you know about chuckwallas? One like = one chuckwalla fact* 🐍 *limit 4 facts, which is all I know about chuckwallas specifically

My toxic Bluesky trait is instead of interacting with a reskeet, I click on the OG post and like that instead. I'm: 1) acknowledging/crediting OP 2) obfuscating my preferences, & 3) usually hiding that I visited someone's profile but am otherwise uninterested in following them. 🙁 What's yours?

"'Influence' itself - that comes from the stars' power over personality and the future. 'Influenza', too - a visitation of stars that makes you feel terrible and like you're dying for a week. THANKS, STARS." Absolutely cracked up on my morning jog. Thanks for being you; hope it's not too much work.

Appreciating the timely cordate flowers of the Lady of the Night #orchid, Brassavola nodosa. I've finally figured out how to enjoy its floral cinnamon fragrance: move it to my nightstand in the evening & close the curtains. It's ONLY fragrant in complete darkness! By bedtime my room smells lovely. 🪴

We are proud to unveil the world’s longest underwater timelapse, starting May 1st 2023 and running 1,000 days through January 28, 2026. This 10fps period covers summer 2023’s coral bleaching mortality event, but then recovering and growing through ‘24 & ‘25 into ‘26 #coralcitycamera

Sunday may have passed, but unbeknownst to the rest of the world, #SuperbOwl 🦉 is a holiday we celebrate every day.

A single young female wolf made it all the way south to Los Angeles County! I'm amazed at the dispersal distances of these animals. Imagine how much vacant habitat she passed through, wandering the Sierra looking for a beau. A new star in town to take over the legacy of P22, may he rest in peace. 🦊🌎

Today I made a little Dromaeosaur from leftover Babybel cheese wax, I hope that's not too unserious to qualify as #SciArt, haha.

Sketching during church. It actually HELPS me focus, okayyyy Of all the fish I've caught, I think this species has the least going on upstairs. Just completely vacant eyes. The medium is a bit crude and I had to make the kids a new stylus because they lost the real one. Can you name it? 🐟 #SciArt

Holy Cthulhu, I've never wanted to reskeet something harder in my life. Possibly the most incredible lizard I've ever seen, I'm stunned. 🤯🐍 I LOVE THIS SKINK WITH MY WHOLE SOUL.

Would you like some lizard with your tail? 🐍

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New on my blog: last fall I took photographs of all the different wasp species that were loitering around the eastern redbud trees in my front yard. People driving by gave me strange looks, but it was worth it. 🌿🧪 #wasps #beetles #insects #entomology #photography colinpurrington.com/2026/02/gall...

Oof...I started listening to Pod & Prejudice in December to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday. I loved the modern feminist fangirl perspective, but the last 2 episodes of the season were a hateful hit piece of the 2005 film. Yuck. I couldn't finish. Know your audience? www.podandprejudice.com

A five minute #SciArt sketch of spawning cutthroat I drew during a work meeting today. 🐟 Comments off (sorry) because I have pretty severe impostor syndrome about sharing flawed, off-the-cuff art and I just don't really want to think about praise or criticism right now.

@bsky.app when am I gonna be able to include ALT text with my profile and banner photos so I can get half my bio space back?

"A beaver's salary...is sticks." @emilyfairfax.bsky.social incredible mic drop moment toward the end of your presentation at River Restoration Northwest. Great message and great delivery, thank you! #hydrology 🦫🦊

Coleus 🪴🌱

This is twisted stalk, a lovely understory plant of rich mesic woods. It's very pretty. Apparently it is marginally edible (I've never tried it), but if you eat too much of it you will learn why some people call it scootberry. #nativeplants 🌿🌱

I bought this NOID Vanda for cheap from the club #orchid auction in fall 2024 because it seemed like it might bloom soon and it would be a fun surprise to guess the cultivar when it flowers. Then it audaciously did not flower in 2025. If it doesn't bloom in 2026, I'm firing up the wood chipper. 🌱🪴

I love the little toes and eyes of western banded geckos. 🐍

The sun actually peeked out and lit up the terrarium for a rare few minutes, despite the fact that it's winter and almost perpetually gray here! 🌱🪴 bsky.app/profile/fish...

The piano tuner is at my house right now, and I sure hope he plays a few measures of something beautiful when he's done. The only noises I've heard from this thing for months are cries for help while my kids practice/abuse it, & now each slightly off-key note 43 times in a row. Why do I feel shame?

I own four original works of art. Only one of these artists is still around (mom), and she's not on Bluesky for reasons you could guess. The first is a deer painting by my great grandmother Ileen. bsky.app/profile/myco...

The rest of the Easter cactus is regaling me with its floral finery. bsky.app/profile/fish... 🌱🪴

#SlimemoldSunday Invasion edition

"I've decided positivity is the Everest of virtues. You have to not only confront the dismal realities of life but choose, oftimes, to blatantly ignore them." - Beth Brower, as Emma M. Lion #booksky

The critter: the habitat 🐍

Well damn. People living <1 mile from a golf course have >2x the risk of developing Parkinson's. I live <200 meters from one. My dad lived on the 18th green for years...& is developing Parkinson's. Still only correlational stage, but with a likely mechanism. www.apdaparkinson.org/article/golf... 🧪

I just love rattlesnakes, they are the embodiment of chill. Especially these ones in Grand Canyon that probably see a lot of hikers every day. 🐍

Imagine if architects designed restaurants for people that looked like what plants grow for bees. 💅 #虫 #nativeplants

Just requested the purchase from my library. My kids are going to love this. Thank you, Tennessee rednecks, for being the Streisand Effect that this book needed. #booksky

I guess I'm ready to be hurt again - ghost orchids are back in the greenhouse cabinet. Please don't die. 🤞🌱

I've never heard of anyone growing strawberries from seed, this is amazing.

Congratulations, everyone, you made it to EASTER CACTUS SEASON! A bit early, but...it's Easter in like...the southern hemisphere, right? Anyway: please enjoy the best holiday cactus (Thanksgiving cacti can please see themselves out). 🪴🌱

One time when we were rafting it started hailing & pummeling everyone & we were all like "WTF, yo" & we sought shelter underneath a ledge at the edge of the river but then that ledge turned into a flash flood & there were rocks falling down so we were like AAAAHHHH and had leave. #hydrology

I like to imagine that there's a little society of troglobitic canyon gnomes living in these pockmarks that only emerges at night to fraternize. Would that I could join them!

I 3D printed a map of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, and switched filaments from blue to green on the layer above the lake elevation. I'm pleased with how it turned out since I'm a newbie and don't really know what I'm doing. Took three tries to get proper adhesion of the first layer, though.

One of my chickens laid a white speckled egg? Not sure which one, but it's very cool. 🌱🪶 I feel like a zombie going through the motions of trying to provide people with a break via nature and gardening photos. If that's why you're here, I hope it helps.

Why do they always look so surprised? We were like the 100th float trip that went by that day. 🦊

New #orchid flowers opened today. This is Miltoniopsis Morris Chestnut. Once the flowers mature they will smell like an English rose. 🌱🪴

Interesting...a new clue in the mystery of Prototaxites, the largest land organism in the Devonian period. It wasn't a fungus 🍄 OR a plant 🌱. It's a completely extinct KINGDOM! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... reported by @sluntz.bsky.social for @iflscience.com www.iflscience.com/the-first-gr...

For the first time in history of the #coralcitycamera we saw all four classes of vertebrate marine animals in one day! Mammal - Dolphin & Manatee, Reptile - Sea Turtle, Fish (Sharks & Rays and scores of Bony Fish species)… But the day belonged to the Birds! 5 cormorants!

It's Clivia season! But I'm also looking forward to next winter because there is a side bulb that I think will be large enough to flower and I'll have TWO spikes. 🌱🪴

Who would like a little desert zen right about now? WELL HERE YOU GO! These images are all from one day in 2011 in Grand Canyon, where the rocks have billion year old conversations and neither know or care that we exist. 🦊 #nativeplants 🌿

A first bloom for one of my species moth #orchids. This is Phalaenopsis schilleriana (endemic to the Philippines), one of the most popular ancestors of the ubiquitous grocery store phals. It is beloved because of the flower shape/color/scent as well as the gorgeous silver mottling of the leaves. 🪴🌱

The next chapter of the Epidendrum nocturnum #orchid story: when I mounted it, it hastily died. Oops. bsky.app/profile/fish... So naturally, when I saw one on the member sales table at the spring show, I couldn't resist. It just opened its first flower, and it's gorgeous & not cleistogamous! 🌱🪴

A wide-angle view of the jewel #orchid terrarium that is accidentally accumulating a bunch of other orchid genera after I cut the flower spikes off a couple of the jewel orchids. 🪴🌱

Check out this Anthurium vittarifolium flower, they are so weird! 🪴🌱

Last night was the Spokane Orchid Society's monthly meeting, which means that today is your lucky day to tour highlights from the show-and-tell! It was a very impressive floral display for midwinter, with dozens of plants in spectacular bloom, only some of which are here. 🪴🌱 #orchid #bloomscrolling