Final Fernbank froggy friends.

More Froggy Friends

Some more froggy friends from Fernbank!!

Hello, I am a cute little froggy!

In September of 2007 Courtney and I headed over to the Fernbank Science museum to check it out--being the nerd that I am it kinda surprises me that it took me a year to get to the museum! Though somewhat smaller than similar museums in Chicago and San Francisco of course, it is still a great science museum with a good amount of hands-on exhibits and some fun variations of some classics. We went to the museum on that particular weekend as there was a special exhibit on the color of frogs. It was a bit challenging getting pictures through the glass and around all the little kids (and finger/nose prints!), but it was fun trying. Here are a couple of my favorites with more to come in the next post.

Highlight of the trip?

It would be hard to pick a single highlight of the Africa trip this past summer, but this might come close. While traveling around in Botswana we say a couple impala watching the brush very carefully and ignoring us--a good sign. A little down the road we found this guy. For close to 11 minutes we were able to follow him around as he marked his territory one last time before sleeping for the day. It was only 8:30 AM, but still, leopards are not usually up at that time and the most that you usually get to see is the flip of a tail hanging out of a tree. We were very luck to say the least!!! If you look closely in the 2nd picture you an see him marking the tree :)

Goats on the Coast

One of the big pushes up at The Sea Ranch where my parents have a place is to have a minimal environmental impact. However, being the California coast there are often lots of dry grasses around which are a real fire hazard. So, the community has hired a shepherd with his flocks of sheep and goats to move up and down the property trimming the grasses to a reasonable height. They use a mix of sheep and goats because the sheep are more efficient, but there are some grasses that even they won't eat--no such qualms for the goats! Environmentally friendly, and around the time of kidding/lambing season, really darned cute. This little goat was posing for us this past Christmas, just getting ready to eat his way south!

Not just in America!

Fish eagles were one of the more prevalent or the large birds we saw in Africa--though not usually this well! This guy was hanging out on a branch we think drying himself off. We were able to get actually very close to him--this is no where near maximum telephoto for me. Many of our guides were also photographers and we could always tell when we found a good sighting when the guide, who does this all the time, brought out his own camera! Needless to say the guide snapped quite a few pictures of this Fish Eagle

Feeling Kelpless

Sea Ranch again for today's post. We had some pretty good storms while I was up there this year and that always means some interesting things get washed up. I liked the way this particular piece of kelp had coral growing in between the roots--Nifty :)