The good, the bad, and the ugly

... they're all interesting. As you will see in this linkie line-up.

The carnivals:

I and the Bird # 59. At Naturalist Notebook. If you checked this one out early on, you probably missed one: there is a late addition: Who likes Wood Storks?.

Circus of the Spineless # 25. At The annotated budak. A very carefully crafted post, loaded with felicitous phrasings; for one, he calls my American house spider a "webmistress". That she is.

The bad and the ugly: (But these sites are definitely good. Useful and informative.)

The top 5 nastiest creatures getting stronger. Brain eating amoeba and the like. Yikes! At Groovy Green.

Plant Pathology; can these plant diseases make you sick? The verdict; usually, no. And reassuring info about evergreens that look sick and aren't. From Iowa State University.

'nuff ickiness; the fun stuff next:

From 10,000 Birds, a non-bird post. And local (for me) to boot: Bandits in the Park. That's our Stanley Park, and the bandits are raccoons. Charlie's photos are fabulous!

Best Sex Video on the Web; that's how Sheril Kirshenbaum bills this one. Barnacles. One that Brian missed in his ongoing series, "Sexiest Animal on the Planet".

The coolest animal on the planet. In my estimation. Water bears. Tardigrades. Now starting a new career as astronauts; see Tardigrade Space Program, at Deep Sea News.

How-to: insect photography 101, by Bev at Burning Silo. Basic gear. A keeper.

Changing the topic: this one is ... disorienting? Frustrating? Militant Platypus has a silhouette spinning either clockwise or counter-clockwise. You decide. If you can.

I saved the best for last. I discovered this by accident; a short biographical sketch of the career of Mary Anning (1799 - 1847).


An amazing woman, an equally amazing life. A poor, uneducated (at least formally) orphan, she scoured the seashore for fossils to sell, to earn a meager living. For 35 years, she collected and studied, borrowing books, consulting with scholars, even dissecting modern creatures. Among her finds was the first plesiosaur known to science. With time and patience, she became an internationally recognized authority on fossils.

I had never before heard her name (another inexcusable gap in my schooling!), but a tiny scrap of her fame had filtered through to me: she is the original subject of that old tongue-twister, "She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore."

A must-read, from Discovering Fossils.