6 posts tagged “fauna”
that is all.
hi from the House Of Plague. the pebbles came back from england last week and summarily developed a fantastic case of bronchitis and/or pneumonia (the doctor wasn't sure), whose most endearing symptom is the racking cough that persists day and night. and today, 8 days after he arrived home, my lungs are slowly filling with cement. because we like to share! yay!
anyway, that's not what this is all about - instead i have a special edition of Random Fauna On The Inkspot for you today, oh yes. no bugs, no herps, no fur even... today it's feathers! weeeeeird feathers.
on a recent weekend road trip to wanganui, roger and i went to visit the local branch of bird rescue, where we had the very rare privilege of meeting a real, live kiwi. and not just meeting her. gonzo is a three-year-old female who suffered severe beak damage two years ago, including the loss of the sensory pads at the end of the lower beak that
help kiwi sense their insect prey. (there - i DID sneak bugs in.) since then she has not fed herself and will never be fit fo release back into the wild. but she can still be part of the kiwi breeding program, operation nest egg. her need to be fed by hand several times a day means, however, that she has to be very comfortable around people - essentially a pet. it may seem a little wrong to let a wild animal get so used to and dependent on people, but if you could see her beady little eyes drift closed, her beak-whiskers quivering with pleasure as she leans into a good scratch on the back of the head, you might decide her life's not so bad.
a kiwi is a pretty unlikely looking animal, a bird evolved to fill an ecological niche normally taken by mammals, in an island country where the only native land mammals are bats. kiwi feathers are very similar to fur, being long, slender and coarse - more traditional feathers would only get shredded as they trundle through the dense undergrowth. and the whole coat of feathers is surprisingly springy to the touch. their bones are solid (gonzo weighed about 2.2 kg), their legs heavy and powerful, and their wings reduced to tiny naked stumps, with a single claw at the tip of each. the whole demeanor is, in fact, much more reminiscent of a large rodent (say, a guinea pig), than a bird - less frantic hopping and head-swiveling, more sedate observation and whisker-twitching. and testing of things by biting.
given their odd appearance and behavior, kiwi do perhaps seem like an odd choice for a national icon, and, as a nz comedian recently pointed out, naming a national airline 'kiwi air' (after a flightless animal that likes to dive nose-first into the ground) may not have been the most inspired marketing tactic. but i have to say, it was a thrill to meet a kiwi - to see the scaly feet and rough feathers up close, to touch the fluffy underdown and watch her drift into a scratch-induced sleeplike trance. kiwi are extraordinarily endangered in nz, and although there is relatively good awareness of and support for remedying their plight, one does occasionally hear the callous question, 'why save this evolutionary dead-end, when it obviously can't survive on its own anymore?' well, i hope gonzo (in between raising healthy chicks, hatched from eggs that weigh 25% of her own body weight when they are laid - ouch!!) meets a few of those cynics and changes their minds.
they're actually smaller than a lot of the local arthropods. look at the tiny skinktoes!
sooooo, remember when i dropped that squid jar last week? i did it again. made it all the way through four full days in the collections without incident, and then, wouldn't you know it? the very last jar i was handling - i swept it off the table in a spectacular slow-motion arc of impending entropy. and i have good taste in well-aged, alcohol-infused calamari, let me tell you. this one was collected in 1922. fortunately, although the jar shattered everywhere, the specimen was not damaged, and i don't think too many glass shards disappeared under the shelving.
on to more positive things. because there is no such thing as too much marine stuff, as soon as i finished working today i toddled over to the miami seaquarium. i suppose i should have realized, being in florida and all, that it would be less aquarium-like and more theme-park-like - fewer display tanks and more of, well, this:
not that i'm complaining - i like to see big marine mammals as much as anyone else, even if (embarassingly) they do put a lump in my throat. seriously, i don't know whether it's imagining their life in captivity, or just being in their presence, but there you go. true confessions of a bleeding-heart squid-hugger. luckily i am more composed around other large marine mammals, like these 15-18', 7000lb manatees. still incredible and humbling, but in a slow and majestic, algae-growing-in-the-armpits kind of way.
and let's not forget the reptiles and their close avian relatives. one of these may not be as exotic as the others, but at least i finally got a decent shot of a curly-tail!
and finally, ok, some more mammals. these guys were showing off on purpose, so i guess they get to make an appearance here.
so, miami and i did not have a good first day together, but things have been improving. here's what i like so far: thunderstorms, lots of interesting squid to look at, commuting to work past beaches, and staring at the local fauna like a total tourist. i can't help it. i know lizards are everywhere down here, but they're cool lizards. there are lots of anoles, which we used to catch all the time at my grandmother's house in tampa when i was little. but there are also curly-tail lizards, which are much bigger than anoles, and you'll never guess how they hold their tails! this one is sneakily camouflaged, mostly because his tail is growing back.
yesterday morning i encountered another exciting (for me) critter - as i walked to work, a movement caught the corner of my eye, but when i turned my head, i couldn't figure out at first what i was seeing. after a few moments i realized it was a crab the size of my fist, munching on some fallen leaves - a giant land crab. these guys are mostly vegetarian and live inshore up to about 5 miles from the sea, apart from spawning season, when they mass-migrate back to the ocean (waving their claws in the air and apparently crossing roads in such high numbers that they have been known to cause flat tires).
neither of those pics is particularly stellar, sorry. let me make up for the poor quality with some more blurry pics. there are anoles in these two. good luck finding them.
and finally, at least one recognizeable one - miami from the air. no immediately obvious animals, but just think how many squid are in that ocean! ;)
