All three snowy plover chicks at Carpinteria State Beach are still going strong. I shot this video of them and their dad this morning.
Maximum cuteness.
Are… are they chasing fleas? How could you stand being on that beach?!
Well, they’re sometimes called sand fleas, or sandhoppers. But they’re mellow little jumping amphipods. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talitridae. No biting of humans involved.
Those are the clear-ish jumping thingies. The smaller dark things are kelp flies, also quite benign.
People sometimes complain about wrack (washed up seaweed) and the invertebrates that associate with it. They prefer a raked, sanitized beach devoid of as much non-human life as possible. I hold a different opinion, as do plovers.
It was their beach for a long time before we moved in and started waging ecocide.
We can’t thank you all enough for the enthusiasm you’ve show us and this project already. Feels like a perfect reason to post our absolutely stunning @abigaillarson poster, which is exclusive to this Kickstarter and available at the $200 level! Abigail has been one of our favorite artists for years, so we were overjoyed when she agreed to create some art for the campaign last year. Just think how cool this will look on your wall! 😍
“ He sought her ever, wandering far Where leaves of years were thickly strewn, By light of moon and ray of star In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon, As on a hill-top high and far She danced, and at her feet was strewn A mist of silver quivering.”
I think the thing with the Tumblr content review system is that they decided to treat reblogs of disputed content as collateral damage. They have a very overly broad machine-learning algorithm (presumably) with a high false-positive rate. So they slap adult-content restrictions on a post, and every reblog of that post. Then, when and if the OP notices and requests review they have an unpaid intern (or whomever) plow through the queue and go yup, that’s cool, that’s cool, that’s cool… And the posts flagged as cool get the restriction lifted.
But.
The reblogs stay restricted. Forever. And Tumblr just says, in effect, LMAO LOL hahaha and moves on.
So I delete the original reblog and reblog again. But it’s dumb, and it breaks the web for no particular reason other than ineptitude and sloth.
Apothecia are what we call the fruiting bodies of lichens. They are typically rounded, bulbous, disc-shaped, or cup shaped, and they contain the tiny sacs (asci) which hold and eject the lichen sexual spores. Not all lichens have apothecia–it varies between individuals as well as species. They are often one of the most prominent and identifying features of a lichen–particularly crustose lichens like S. californica. This crustose lichen has a white, filmy thallus stretched over the substrate, speckled with undulating apothecia. The apothecial discs are convex, and darkly colored with a thick layer of pale pruina, giving them an overall grayish coloration. This lichen grows on branches, trunks, and cut wood on the Oregon and California coasts.
