This ibis knows all the secrets. The one about the Kells, the ones about NIMH and Roan Inish, and all the ones in Arrietty’s world.

This ibis is planning to infiltrate the Ya-Ya Sisterhood next.

Little known fact: spoonbills never got around to inventing salad tongs.

I picked up an ultraviolet camera last year, but it wasn’t until a month or two back that I got the lens I needed with it. I had hoped that I could leverage older lenses with this camera and, as it turned out, the answer was “not really”. They do work, but they don’t have full transmission across all UV bands, so it wasn’t clear if I was getting everything I really wanted.

I still need to find a way to generate full spectrum UV light (the sun is a good source, I think, but I need a flouride spectrum or something to spread out the colours) so I can test the lenses I have to see how close they really are. I also have concerns that the camera itself may not be detected everything I want it to, but testing that is much harder as it means I have to convert several cameras so I can do side-by-side testing.

For now, enjoy the weirdness that is less than ideally scientific (non-fluorescent) UV photography.

Polly not only wants a cracker, she wants the cracker you have in your hand right now.

And she is not going to take “no” for an answer.

Kingfishers have tiny tongues.

In most places, they play a game called Duck, Duck, Goose, in which you circle children like a predatory shark calling each of them a duck until you pick a goose which, in goose-like fashion, chases you around the circle until you can sit down in their vacated place.

In Minnesota, we play a game called Duck, Duck, Grey Duck, work works similarly except that instead of calling each child a duck, you can make up colours until you get to “grey”, which triggers the flight response. This game is superior in that it allows room for more creativity and misleading states, such as “Grrrr…een Duck!”, “Grrrr…anite Duck!”, or “Grrr…ullo Duck!”, which can derail the entire game into discussions like “Grullo isn’t a colour!” “Yes it is, Wikipedia says so!” “No it’s not!” “It’s #A99A86. It says so right there.” “I thought granite was a rock.”

This version of the game is problematic due to the fact that Minnesota does not, in fact, have any native ducks that are grey. Minnesota ducks are the mallard, green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, cinnamon teal, pintail, gadwall (which, to be fair, is greyish), wigeon, shoveler, wood duck, and black duck for puddle ducks and the canvasback, redhead, ringneck (also called ringbill), scaup (also called bluebill), goldeneye, bufflehead, and ruddy duck for diving ducks.

Only in Texas do they play Bird, Bird, Bear.

American Democracy

Cheetah suddenly realizing that the lyrics to the Bananana Boat Song imply that bananananas are harvested at night, which both makes sense given the heat of the day but also explains why banananananas are a common* source of invasive spiders.

* Much less common these days but even so, bananananananas are much more susceptible to such things than other fruits**

** Surprising everyone, banananananananas -are- technically, fruits***.

*** Also surprising everyone bananananananananas are -also- technically herbs.