Category: Animals / Insects / Water Life / Plants / Nature
I Haven’t Posted One of These In A While-Enjoy! 💖 ☮ 🌞
“Straight up through the sky above this road right now, The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.” by Worriedman
Pattiann Rogers – ” Achieving Perspective” Read on Substack
The whole brilliant poem, read by David Byrne! Make sure you follow the [this] link. This is one of the best things I’ve ever shared-
Pattiann Rogers is one of the great modern poets. She writes about nature in a completely relatable way that you can learn from and admire.
Cardinal! State bird of seven different states – the most of any bird. Meadowlarks come in second with six different states. (This feels like the kind of information old people share….)
Lilac! The good old fashioned kind.
The fragrance is amazing. In a day or two they’ll be fully open. A week after that they’ll be gone.
I went out to the barn to visit some friends
Never gets old!
(snip-little vid of Barncat greeting Worriedman. Just click through above to see it; I couldn’t embed it.)
She’s so pretty!
She’s been working on this for years-
Juice! You can’t hide, Juice…
I am frequently found taking pictures of flowers in the rain.
Ninebark – Two different varieties
A goose among the ragwort –
That’s all I’ve got room for – Thanks for dropping by!
Eugene V. Debs & the Pullman Palace Car Co. Strike & Boycott, plus More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/22
May 22, 1894 Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was imprisoned in Illinois for his role in the Pullman Palace Car Company strike and boycott, which had stalled most rail traffic west of Detroit. Read more about the Pullman strike |
| May 22, 1968 Federal marshals entered Boston’s Arlington Street Unitarian-Universalist Church to arrest Robert Talmanson, who had been convicted of refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces. He had been offered sanctuary there by the leaders of the church who shared his opposition to the Vietnam War. When the marshals tried to remove him, access to their car was blocked by 200-300 nonviolent sanctuary supporters.  Draft resister Robert Talmanson dragged by authorities from Arlington Street Church. |
| May 22, 1978 Four thousand protesters occupied the site of the Trident nuclear submarine base in Bangor, Washington. The base was built for the maintenance and resupply of Ohio-class submarines. Though built as part of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, they were perceived by some as giving the U.S. a nuclear first-strike capability with their ability to each deliver 24 missiles with multiple warheads from very close to the borders of other countries. The 14 vessels are at sea 2/3 of the time and can travel as deeply as 800 feet for a time limited only by its food supply. Read more about Ground Zero |
| May 22, 2001 Delegates from 127 countries formally voted approval of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS), a treaty calling for the initial elimination of 12 of the most dangerous manmade chemicals, nine of which are pesticides.  POPS are often toxic at very low levels, resist degradation and thus persist for decades or longer, because they become concentrated in living tissue, are readily spread by atmospheric and ocean currents.Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, lauding the agreement, said, “. . . we have to go further. Dangerous substances must be replaced by harmless ones step by step. If there is the least suspicion that new chemicals have dangerous characteristics it is better to reject them.” POPS background |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may22
That Time of Year
These Are a Couple of Worthwhile Reads.
Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
“Little Yellow Chest”
Flamingos!
Watch flamingos create water tornadoes to trap their prey
May 14, 2025 Imma Perfetto
Flamingos are known for posing serenely on one leg in extreme wetlands, placidly bobbing their heads into the shallow water to feed. But a new study has revealed there’s more going on beneath the surface than meets the eye.
It seems flamingos create controlled underwater chaos to actively trap their prey, according to the research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
They use a repertoire of behaviours, including stomping feet, jerking heads, and chattering beaks, to create swirling “underwater tornadoes” that concentrate and funnel prey into their mouths.
“Flamingos are actually predators, they are actively looking for animals that are moving in the water,” says lead author of the paper Victor Ortega Jiménez, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California Berkeley in the US.
“The problem they face is how to concentrate these animals, to pull them together and feed. Flamingos are using vortices to trap animals, like brine shrimp.
“It’s not just the head, but the neck, their legs, their feet and all the behaviours they use to effectively capture these tiny and agile organisms.”
https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/HJH3i8Guf_default/index.html?videoId=6372736054112
Credit: Victor Ortega Jiménez, UC Berkeley
Ortega Jiménez and his collaborators trained Chilean flamingos at the Nashville Zoo to feed from a shallow aquarium.
They used high speed cameras and laser light to view the gas bubbles created in the water to visualise the animals’ feeding behaviour. They then confirmed their observations using fluid dynamics computer simulations and experiments using 3D printed models of flamingo beaks and feet.
They found that flamingos stomp their floppy webbed feet to churn up the sediment beneath them, propelling it forward in whorls.
The birds then draw these vortexes towards the water’s surface by jerking their heads upward at speeds of about 40cm/s, creating mini tornadoes that concentrate particles of food.
https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/HJH3i8Guf_default/index.html?videoId=6372734765112
Credit: Victor Ortega Jiménez, UC Berkeley
These small vortices are strong enough to trap even agile invertebrates, such as brine shrimp and microscopic crustaceans called copepods.
The flamingos’ heads remain upside down within this watery vortex, with their unique beaks angled so that the flat front end stays parallel to the bottom. They then “chatter”, clapping the lower beak open and shut about 12 times every second, to create smaller vortices that direct sediment and food into their mouths.
Experiments with 3D replicas of flamingo beaks revealed that chattering increases the number of brine shrimp captured by the beak seven-fold.
They found that flamingos also use a technique called “skimming”, which involves pushing the head forward while chattering to create sheet-like vortices – called von Kármán vortices.
https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/HJH3i8Guf_default/index.html?videoId=6372736433112
Credit: Victor Ortega Jiménez, UC Berkeley
“We observed when we put a 3D printed model in a flume to mimic what we call skimming, [it produces] symmetrical vortices on the sides of the beak that recirculate the particles in the water, so they actually get into the beak,” Ortega Jiménez says.
“It’s this trick of fluid dynamics.”
The team believes that their findings could be used to design better systems for concentrating and sucking up particles, such as microplastics, from water.
Next, Ortega Jiménez aims to determine the role of the flamingo’s piston-like tongue and how the comb-like edges of the beak filter prey out of the water.
They’re doing it again, they are so messed up and hurtful. They are destroying everything they touch Part 2
“A Preference for Pines”
I share that!
