Hole in the Clouds

Tag: animal

The Channel Island Connection

Sep 5, 2009

Avram Dimitrscu's father was a musician in a Romanian concert band, behind the Iron Curtain. In the 1970s, the band toured western Europe, including the Channel Islands, where Avram's mother, a native of Belfast, Northern Island, was working at a resort hotel. They fell in love, and when it came time for the band to return to Romania, she helped him hide and eventually defect.. Avram was born on the Isle of Jersey and raised in Belfast. His parents ran a catering business until the 1990s, when travel to Romania became possible. Then they bought a truck and began operating a charity, collecting donations of food, clothing, and everything else, and driving all the way across Europe every month or so to deliver the contributions to Romanians in need.

Avram grew up during the troubles in Northern Ireland, in a Catholic part of town, and enrolled as an art student at the University of Belfast. He worked at a McDonald's near campus during the school year but spent his summers abroad, in Maine, where he worked as a camp counselor at a boys' camp. It was there that he met fellow-counselor John Stein. Avram and John traveled together, and Avram spent time in Alabama with all the Steins--always with his sketchbook in hand. Eventually, he married an American woman and moved to the town of Alpine, in the Big Bend area of extreme west Texas. He paints, illustrates, teaches art, runs the Dimitrescu Gallery, and surely still keeps his sketchbook close at hand.

This is his "Tiny Chicken #8."

Texas   Romania   painting   Northern Ireland   chicken   animal   John Stein   Avram Dimitrescu   (Image credit: Avram Dimitrescu  

Thekla takes lunch

Sep 9, 2009

Yesterday, Tanja Baker noticed this arachnid, named her Thekla, watched her eat three bugs, and got her to pose for a picture.

Thekla is about an inch long from toe to toe. "Too bad I have to work," Tanja says, "and cannot watch this all day." Thekla's name is from the spider in a German children's story, "Maya the Bee."

animal   spider   Tanja Baker   (Image credit: Tanja Baker)  

Camel story

Aug 22, 2009

Time to catch up with the Mongol Rally folks. After about six weeks on the road now, many of the 200 or so teams have recently reached Ulaan Bataar, where they signed the rally book, did their laundry, and partied. There is no prize for arriving first. Rallyers donate their vehicles to Mongolian NGO's and eventually make their way home somehow.

A team called Rolling Cones, from Richmond, Virginia, spent three days wandering in the Gobi Desert in their pink ice cream truck. They say the rocks in the Gobi are so iron-rich that compasses don't work there. Mongol Rally rules discourage GPS navigation, but the Rolling Cones had secretly stashed a little GPS unit deep in their luggage for just such a contingency--not that they anticipated exactly such a contingency, but contingencies happen. They noticed that a roadwork crew was speaking Mandarin Chinese instead of Mongolian, and it had been three days since they'd last known where they were, so . . . turned out they were in the extreme southeast corner of Mongolia, a few kilometers from the Chinese border, in a spot on the map that was completely empty of roads. But there was a coal mine nearby, which is why the Chinese were building a new road, and at the mine there were two geologists from Virginia Tech. So it goes.

All the blog posts are full of promises to post their Mongolia photos soon. I trust them, of course, so I'll make the same promise. In the meantime, here's a nice one from back in Kazakhstan, near the shriveled shore of the Aral Sea. Photo by Team Mongoliza, who list their hometown as "southeast Asia."

animal   Mongol Rally   Kazakhstan   Gobi Desert   camel   Aral Sea   (Image credit: Team Mongoliza)  

Can't sleep? Have you tried ostriches?

Aug 18, 2009

Family life among the animals can get up close and personal with a webcam aimed 24/7 at a mud wallow in the forest claimed by a pack of wild boars, or a nest of sticks atop a telephone pole where a couple of storks have laid their eggs. But that was last summer and the summer before--this year, in Estonia, the webcams are mounted at an ostrich farm. One clutch of baby ostriches has hatched now, and you can watch the fluffy little bird-brained things squirming and snuggling under a heat lamp. Mom and Dad are outside in a paddock, incubating another nestful of eggs--looks like the male and female take turns sitting on the nest.

Go here to get your fill of ostrich video eye candy. The website is in Estonian, but even we Amurricans can figure out how to click on the pictures.

Hey, it's free--watch those ostriches all you want. The heatlamp is left on round the clock, so time zones won't keep you and those babies apart. Outside in the paddock, it gets light in Estonia around 10 or 11 p.m. Eastern daylight time. If you're up late, you can turn on the ostriches and watch them sitting on the nest and bobbing their heads a little, strolling along the fence line, grazing in the grass. Will you get bored? Yes--you're not an ostrich. But technology can hold your interest: instead of watching the ostriches in real time, you can click on another date and hour, and see what they were up to back then. By dragging your mouse across the bottom of the video frame, you can watch everything the ostriches did that hour in just a few seconds, and you can even watch them in reverse. Clouds will race across the sky, the sun will leap up from the horizon, and the ostriches will hop about right smartly.

If you could speed up the entire first year of video of a baby ostrich's life, you'd see it gain 100 pounds and grow as tall as an adult human. By age 3 or 4, mature ostriches can be 9 feet tall and weigh 350 pounds. They have three stomachs but no gall bladder, in case you were wondering.

There would be little point in speeding up video of an ostrich running; they can go from 0 to 27 miles per hour in a couple of seconds. Sometimes people race ostriches, with jockeys on their backs using saddles and bridles. They are said to be much more difficult to control than horses, but also much faster.


 

animal   ostrich   Estonia   (Image credit: unknown)  

Say "Acorn!"

Aug 17, 2009

They wanted a picture of themselves at their lakeside campsite in Banff National Park, so they put the camera on a rock and set the shutter for a delayed snapshot.

The whirring sound made by the camera as it prepared to snap attracted a squirrel, who chattered right back at it and got himself nicely pixellated for his 1/250th of a second of fame.

Or so it said on the National Geographic website. Hat tip to John "J.J." Stein for this fine submission to our irregular summer series of cute animal pictures. (Yes, there are more....)

animal   John Stein   Canada   squirrel   Banff National Park   (Image credit: National Geograpic)  

A steer's stare

Oct 4, 2009

Several of you asked to see more work by our Romanian Northern Irish West Texas friend Avram Dimitrescu. He calls this acrylic painting "Longhorn and Mountains."

For many more images, see Avram's blog and his portfolio website. He doesn't just paint chickens and cows, though I might be satisfied if he did; he's also got  paintings and drawings of landscapes, buildings, vehicles, food, and the digging arm of an excavating machine.
 

Texas   painting   animal   Avram Dimitrescu   cow   (Image credit: Avram Dimitrescu)  

The deer hunters, #2

Oct 17, 2009

There's an urban legend about a deer more spectacular than any other, a deer that's pure white, maybe even albino. It is glimpsed from time to time, usually at dusk or dawn or even after dark. It's shy and quick, won't stick around for the camera.

For a hunter to shoot such a deer, a white ghost of a deer, would make the whole forest cry. It would bring a whole lifetime of bad luck to the hunter who felled it. Unless it was actually a good luck charm. Or a trophy like no other--a trophy deer above all others.

One problem with the white deer, urban-legend-wise, is that there's widespread disagreement concerning what it might signify, if it signifies anything. The story is messy, if there is a story to it. But that's okay, urban-legend-wise, because the white deer is real--an estimated 1 deer out of 30,000 is albino, completely white with pink eyes.

Their coloration leaves them especially vulnerable to human hunters and other predators. Do they know that? Is that why they are so shy? Perhaps not, but their light-sensitive eyes may make them avoid daylight even more than other deer.

Nonetheless, Janet Goldwater sort of got a photo of an albino deer that had been eating apples from her tree in Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. "This photo was taken (in a rush obviously!) through the window of my house," she writes. "My opportunity to take a photo came at dusk, hence the slow shutter speed."

Here, the albino deer looks almost like a unicorn, which seems appropriate enough. If you want clearer pictures, you can find them on the tubes.  But this shot seems to pretty much sum up the whole white-deer thing: whatever is out there is hard to see, impossible to pin down, fleeing fast , but definitely, positively, really something.

animal   Pennsylvania   night   deer   (Image credit: Janet Goldwater)  

Did you remember to close the gate?

Oct 25, 2009

"The Storybook Wolf," by Spanish photographer Josi Luis Rodriguez, won National Geographic's 2009 prize for wildlife photography. To get the shot, Rodriguez rigged up a motion sensor that tripped the shutter of his camera, which used an infrared sensor for night vision.

I know this wolf. He eats grandmothers and little pigs and little Russian boys, and I'm sure he's very hungry now.

animal   Spain   night   wolf   National Geographic   (Image credit: Josi Luis Rodriguez)  

Not a wombat

Dec 18, 2009

This is an ibex, photographed by Ruggero Barsacchi on safari in . . . Italy.

I guess I didn't know my ibex from my keister. To me, this guy looks like African big game, maybe an antelope sort of creature that might even give a lion a hard time. Nope. You're looking at lo stambecco, the mountain goat of the Italian Alps.

Ibexes are not really big enough to take on lions, but at 100 kilograms or more, with horns up to a meter in length, a full-grown male ibex can do a number on a wolf. Prized medicinally--almost all its body parts and also its excrement were said to cure whatever ails you--by the early nineteenth century it had been hunted almost to extinction. Ibex herds are now protected and have grown dramatically; the species is no longer considered particularly endangered.

animal   landscape   Alps   ibex   (Image credit: Ruggero Bersacchi)  

Stella

Dec 19, 2009

Some people think it's been way too long since the last cute puppy picture, so . . . here's Stella, looking up at us from Michele Manno's lap. Clearly, the leopard-print fabric doesn't fool her for a minute.
 

Michele Manno   animal   dog  

Welcome to Borneo

Jan 15, 2011

Believe it or not, there are in this world orangutans who just don't know what orangutans need to know. There are also orangutans who know full well how to be orangutans but who because of injury or illness can't get with the program. There are also orangutans who know how to be orangutans and are able and willing to live the orangutan life but who've lost their habitat.

On their own in the wild, these unfortunate orangutans are not going to make it. But if they are somehow directed to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center just outside of Sandakan, on the north coast of Borneo, even they can live happily ever after.

Sepilok is basically a feeding station with no walls; orangutans can eat there forever, come and go at will, or hang around for a while and then give life in the jungle a try. There's also a nursery for orphaned babies, who grow up unafraid of humans or orangutans; by growing up in orangutan paradise in the company of numerous adult orangutans, the orphans have a good shot at learning all the good stuff about orangutan ways.

This fellow certainly looks like proof of concept.

animal   Borneo   Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center   Sandakan   (Image credit: A. at kiwi-stories)  

Duck Duck Goose

Dec 21, 2011

This species of duck is native to Africa and is ubiquitous throughout the continent, except in deserts and deep forest. It is not native but nonetheless ubiquitous in many parts of Europe, especially England, where it was introduced more than three centuries ago and has thrived in town and countryside to such an extent that it was added last year to the official national list of animal pests. This picture was taken recently in London.

The birds are known as Egyptian Geese, despite the fact that they are ducks, not geese. Apparently, they have a heavy-looking habit of flight that makes them look goose-like in the air.

animal   duck   London   Africa   bird   goose  

Use Your Imagination

Nov 17, 2012

Fair Oaks District, Centreville Rd., 2300 block, Dec. 7. Animal control was called about a squirrel running inside a residence. When an animal control officer saw the squirrel, it jumped into an open baby grand piano. After the officer started playing the song "All I Want" by the group Toad the Wet Sprocket, the squirrel jumped out of the piano and onto curtains, damaging them. The squirrel then jumped onto the officer's head and pounced onto a couch, where the officer was able to catch it. The officer released the animal outside. Neither the squirrel nor the officer was injured.

(Reprinted from the February 12, 2001, edition of New Yorker magazine.)

animal   piano   music   squirrel   Constabulary Notes From All Over  

Black Sheep

Jan 26, 2014

This is not, of course, a New Zealand sheep; it's a Dutch sheep, trimmed to look not so much like a sheep, at the behest of Amsterdam artists Lernert & Sander, who'd been hired by a newspaper to illustrate a series on the theme of family.

Human families, needless to say, have black sheep. What about black sheep families? It took dog groomer Marieke Hollander almost a full day to do up this sheep like a French poodle, but the result was, at least arguably, quite a black sheep among black sheep.

animal   sheep   Holland   Marieke Hollander   grooming   poodle?   DeVolkskrant   (Image credit: Lernert & Sander)  

The IPPAs

Jun 17, 2014

It's all official and everything: the winners of the eighth annual worldwide iPhone photography awards have been announced, and they come from everywhere and have taken pictures of everything.

Above is the first place entry in the Still Life category, by Sophiya Strindlund of Stockholm. It's a really pretty picture, but does anybody know what all those hooks are for?

Placing third overall for 2014 photographer of the year is Jill Missner of Ridgefield, Connecticut, for the picture below.

animal   dog   winter   room   still life   wall   iphone   pet   table   spots   hooks   (Image credit: Sophiya Strindlund)  

Guarding the Coop

Jun 21, 2014

Men standing around in front of the U.S. Capitol building, holding a fox, 1919.

This photo comes from the files of the Office of the Architect, U.S. Capitol. The backstory is not known to us, but apparently foxes are observed from time to time roaming the grounds of the Capitol, feasting on squirrels. Just last February, tourists noted exactly that, and the Washington press corps twittered all about it.

animal   Washington   fox   1919   Capitol   (Image Credit: U.S. Capitol Office of the Architect)  

Betty and the Beast

Jan 27, 2016

Last week, Betty White turned 94. She's probably been an animal person for at least 90 of those years. And of course she's been a Golden Girl for a really long time, and the Happy Homemaker for a long time before that. In fact, by our calculations, she's been in show business for at least 77 years.

She first worked in front of a TV camera in 1939, when she was three months out of high school and the medium was still experimental. After volunteer service in World War II and a few postwar years working in radio, she came back to TV, and by 1952–when she was only 30 years old and still living at home with her parents–she was producing, directing, hosting, and singing and dancing in her own show.

This picture was taken on the set of the Betty White Show, in 1954. It was a noon-hour talk show; Betty chatted with guests, traded one-liners with the boys in the orchestra, sat at a desk to read jokes and riddles sent in by viewers, and swallowed a slug of Geritol to prove it tasted good and gave her lots of energy. 

YouTube has preserved at least a couple of the show's episodes, from November 29th, 1954, when Rin Tin Tin makes a brief appearance near the end, and December 6th.  Sadly, neither of those videos is any help in figuring out why Betty's got her hand on a baby elephant. 

animal   1954   tv   Betty White   commercials   elephant   (Image via Shorpy.com)  

Outside the Wire

Apr 3, 2016

This fence is part of the security for Naval Base Kitsap–Bangor, home to eight submarines armed with Trident nuclear missiles.

The deer are apparently not a security issue, but drones, on the other hand, are becoming a big problem. Multiple drone flights over the base been reported, all taking place at night, and nobody knows who is flying the drones or why.

Naval investigators have yet to solve the mystery.  Nearby residents have been interviewed, but their involvement is doubtful. "I really can't imagine any of the neighbors or neighbors' kids thinking it's OK to run drones over Bangor," said one area resident who'd been interrogated about the incidents. "Everyone here is very aware that this is one of the most lethal places on earth."

Signs around the base perimeter warn "Keep Out. Use of force authorized."

animal   Washington   Navy   deer   wildlife   submarines   Bainbridge Island   Bangor   (Image credit: Ken Lambert for Seattle Times)