I went to a fantastic symposium yesterday evening titled “The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art,” which explored the various connections both historical and present-day between art and the environment. My favorite three talks were by the artists Alexis Rockman, Mark Dion and James Prosek. Each gave interesting, personal accounts of their work … More The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art
A quick diversion: During a short trip home, my father, a beekeeper for as long as I can remember, decided it was time to try something new with his hives to see if he could get them to last through the winter. This year, we’re adding color! The thought is that darkly colored hives, instead … More Bee Houses
It doesn’t get much better than this NPR account of field biology, exploration, rare species and biodiversity conservation. Short story: (but really you should read the whole NPR article) there’s a spire of rock called Ball’s Pyramid in the Pacific Ocean, west of Australia. Hundreds of years ago, explorers landed, finding massive stick insects up … More Field expeditions at their best.
Billions of tweets are sent each month and we’re fast approaching 1 in 5 people globally signed up for a Facebook account. Yes, globally. Social media venues are here to stay and their users are ready and willing to spend a great deal of time and (increasingly) treasure in these internet realms. For all this … More Environmental Education and Social Media
Over dessert the other night my grandmother asked me “So, is a lizard a lizard a lizard?” This deceptively important question is a great place to start this next blog iteration because I’m grappling with that very question in my research right now. Let me give you a bit of background on the question, why … More Are all lizards just lizards?
To date I’ve used this blog to send out mass-emails to friends and family from trips abroad. As you can tell from the last entry date, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the field. In the interim I finished my Masters at Michigan (I won’t belabor the details now), was accepted at Yale’s … More And now for something completely different.
So here’s one more story about the last few days in Kenya. Kayla and I left Mpala with the undergraduates at the end of August and on our way to Nairobi we all stayed at this incredibly fancy game lodge in the middle of Aberdare National Park. It’s aptly named “The Ark” and gave us … More The Ark
Hello Everyone, I’m back in the states, and I apologize that it’s been a while since my last posting. Shortly after that entry we were joined at Mpala by 15 undergraduates from the University of Michigan, two professors, and their families. Kayla, Walker and I moved with the students to another location without power, let … More Final Mpala Wrap-up
While at Baboon cliffs (see previous post for silly pictures of me watching the sunset) we found a snake that had been fairly well eaten by a bird. The bird was gone but the snake was still pretty intact (viscera were missing but the head and body scales were actually in good shape) so we … More Boomslang
Well, it’s been another month… and things are getting pretty ridiculous. I’ll let this photo speak for itself. It was taken by a friend at Baboon cliffs – a great new spot with an amazing vista.
Colin Donihue 