Squirrels in St James's Park

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Reptile expert

 

My parents' neighbour is a school teacher. He brings home the classroom reptiles in the summer and keeps them in his garage. He incubates leopard gekko eggs and sells them to the pet store, which helps him pay for upkeep and new reptiles.

The feeling of their feet walking is very nice.

Pig

Chipmonks get creative

  
This origami budgie was made by @maxxmonkey's chipmonks. It is a copy of the budgie I found in the garden a few years ago. It is very well done and I wanted to share it with my faithful readers :)

Bird's eye views

I know I am breaking a cardinal rule of photography here by taking a picture with a window in the background, but so be it. Squint. A friend gave me the mint plant on the windowsill. It is in a pot given to me by a cousin. I bought the white orchid on Great Suffolk Street and the violet one in Borough Market. The plate I bought in Hollywood. The lamp I bought on The Cut. The beer tankard is a leaving gift from my colleagues in Toronto.


Here is a longer view of it all.


Kitchen table with picture taken from train of mountains and lake in Alberta.


A shot of the shelving unit I built. The vase is from Mum's friend Marie. She bought it for me when I went to visit her in Grayshott.

Elastic animals

Felt very lucky to have found the animal elastic bands in the bottom of my wool container.

Boxing Day hunt, Broadway

In which the Boxing Day Hunt in Broadway is observed. The video begins with a man collecting "money for the hounds" in a bucket. It continues with a second man collecting "money for the air ambulance" in a bucket. The hounds come next, followed by the hunters, their children and some cyclists.

Perspective

I think mice are rather nice;
Their tails are long, their faces small;
They haven't any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
and, no one seems to like them much,
but, I think mice are rather nice.

Rose Fyleman

Edible Australian delicacy

I confess I had the smallest of nibbles of this dried kangaroo meat brought directly from Australia.

It tastes like it looks: dry and hard. Not something I plan to eat when I visit Australia.

Click on the pic for a close-up look.

Dinosaur tour at the ROM

A docent I met while I was at the Darwin exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum a couple of weeks ago invited me to attend a tour of the dinosaurs.


I had grumbled to her about how I missed the way the they had been displayed before everything was reworked after the Crystal was added to the building.


Marion, the docent, seemed to think I had thrown down the gauntlet with my statements. She wanted to convince me otherwise about the dinosaurs.


It was an excellent tour, despite the crowds. At the conclusion of the 45 minute walk through the galleries, Marion answered questions.


Marion taught biology in high school for 37 years and knows her stuff, but it was so crowded in the galleries that I couldn't hear everything over the racket of the kids and video display monitors.


I saw all kinds of beasts . . .







. . . and parts of beasts.





I didn't use a flash for any of the pictures I took in the museum.


Except when I went into the old bat cave afterwards.

The cave and bats seem to have been dusted recently. The museum seems antiseptic now. Pre-Crystal, the dinosaurs had their own special leafy environment.


Went for cafe latte and baklava afterwards.

Magnifying Darwin

I went to the opening of the Darwin exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum last week. It is titled, "Darwin: The Evolution Revolution".

The exhibit examines personal aspects of Darwin's life as well as focusing on his discoveries about evolution.

There was a large magnifying glass in the children's play area. The enlarged images of the objects put under it were projected on a screen on the wall.

I spent quite a bit of time observing different objects being magnified and taking pictures.








From time-to-time photos flashed up on the screen.



There were two live tortoises in a display case. They aren't the kind Darwin observed in the Galapagos, but they are quite big. It didn't look as though they were having much fun. People kept tapping on the glass to get their attention. It worked, but in general I found they were quite alert to their surroundings and any new presence nearby.


This tortoise in the picture below looked up to see what I was doing. I didn't tap at him or try and get his attention. The tortoises spent a lot of time hiding their faces toward the rocks. It seemed quite bright inside the contained area.


This is a stuffed tortoise--I think. I forgot to read the label.