I got a new cell phone (an HTC Inspire 4G), and decided to take a few shots to see what kind of quality it gets in photos. It has an 8MP camera and an LED flash, but only a tiny lens, so depth of field and focus aren’t amazing – but it’s not bad. A […]
This is what they looked like a week ago, on 8/31: This is the third instar; the thoracic tubercules are spiky, but not actually very sharp, and they’re bright yellow. Most of the time, this happens on a twig, and it’s very difficult to see – I’m lucky that this time, a couple of […]
The chickens are holding up OK in our record summer heat. We did lose one to heat stroke, early on… one of the young roosters was trying to be close to Momma while she was trying to lay an egg in the middle of the afternoon, and it was just too much. I set up […]
The Promethea caterpillars are changing to second instar. They’re seven days old. They have not all shifted yet – they may have hatched across two days, or some may just be a little delayed. You can see that the remaining first-instar caterpillars are smaller, and also yellower than their second-instar siblings. You can see – […]
The Promethea moth (Callosamia promethea) lives in Texas, but not the part where I live – they want the far-eastern reaches of the state, up against Louisiana. They have a wide range in the eastern US, all the way to the Atlantic. These are the eggs after hatching. They remind me a lot of the […]
The chickens are growing up fast! They’re eight weeks old today. They will spend long periods of time some distance from their momma, although they still tend to hang out with her when the other hens are around, and she’s still feeding them and gathering them up into the coop at night. We’ve quite […]
Chris got me a new camera for our anniversary; a Canon T2i. I’ve been playing around with the new camera, looking at some hatchling silkworms. This one’s in the process of hatching. They bite through the egg shell, bit by bit, and then crawl out. The lenses on the new camera are working for […]
I’ve seen articles and reports on some of the amazing stuff coming from TUFTS University, and now there’s a TED talk about it, here. Fascinating stuff! A link to his lab is here.
The Sammons Center for the Arts, the amazingly cool place where I work, is part of the Refresh Everything Pepsi Challenge. Our idea is a Family Arts Festival; we want to introduce people to the Arts. You can vote online here, and you can also text 106158 to 73774 from your cell phone. If you […]
We’ve got peeps. I had tried putting fertile eggs under Sue back in December. Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake, and so did she. I didn’t change her food when I put her in the broody box; a sitting hen needs a leaner diet than a laying hen, to prevent diarrhea. What she did wrong, […]