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ePostcard #117: Nightwatch: From Sand to Sea (Part 3)
Cover Photo (above) Credit and Caption: Courtesy of Florida Fish & Wildlife. A “boil" of green sea turtle hatchlings emerges en masse from their deep nest hole in the sand. At hatching time, usually as the sun sets and the warm sand begins to cool, turtle...
ePostcard #116: Nightwatch: Sea Turtles Are Ecosystem Sentinels (Part 2)
ePostcard #116: Nightwatch: Sea Turtles Are Ecosystem Sentinels (Part 2) Sea turtles are ecosystem sentinels—critical threads in the complex tapestry of global biodiversity. For sea turtle recovery efforts to succeed globally, we must ensure that the far-flung...
ePostcard #115: Nightwatch–Sea Turtles at Risk (Part 1)
ePostcard #115: Nightwatch--Sea Turtles at Risk (Part 1) Nearly all sea turtle biologists, sooner or later, become turtle conservationists …Peter Pritchard, “The Conservation of Sea Turtles,” 1980 The future of some of the Earth’s most incredible, resilient...
ePostcard #114: Nightwatch
ePostcard #114: Nightwatch “Managing darkness has to be an integral part of future conservation planning and illumination concepts.” Dark Sky Association The natural world is a busy place at night! As our human viewshed darkens, the mysterious sounds and...
ePostcard #113: The Black Marble
ePostcard #113: The Black Marble To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. Wendell Berry Experiencing the magic of a...
ePostcard #112: Builders and Renters (Tierra del Fuego & Patagonia)
ePostcard #112: Builders and Renters (Tierra del Fuego & Patagonia) In the mountains where I live in Colorado, one of my favorite springtime traditions was visiting an elegant ponderosa pine snag on the ridge above my home, where generations of woodpeckers and...
ePostcard #111: Aspen Leaf Dance
ePostcard #111: Leaf Dance Introduction: Before returning to our exploration of Tierra del Fuego, I want to step back to September and celebrate my home landscape in Colorado and the golden autumn that preceded our immersion in smoke and loss. These aspen photos are...
ePostcard #110: A Burning Testament (Terry Tempest Williams)
ePostcard #110: A Burning Testament (Terry Tempest Williams) Photo Credit: This photo of the “tail" of the Troublesome Fire was taken yesterday evening by an unidentified woman on a domestic airline flight from Denver across the mountains. You can’t see the “head" of...
ePostcard #109: Secrets of the Nest (Magellanic Woodpeckers)
ePostcard #109: Secrets of the Nest (Magellanic Woodpeckers) My first trip to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego was in the austral spring of 1999. It was not a Cloud Ridge trip, but I certainly had one in mind for the future. Our guide was the inimitable Carol...
ePostcard #108: Do Woodpeckers Get Hammer Headaches?
ePostcard #108: Do Woodpeckers Get Hammer Headaches? Woodpeckers are unique among birds, and indeed in the whole animal kingdom, in producing rhythmic instrumental sounds by drumming their bill on a resonating "sounding board," such as a patch of bare wood, a...
ePostcard #107: Leave it to Beaver (Tierra del Fuego)
ePostcard #107: Leave it to Beaver (Tierra del Fuego) When you think about it, and despite our wildly divergent evolutionary lineages. beavers are among our closest ecological and technological kin. While all organisms have evolved to fill naturally-provided niches,...
ePostcard #106: Skua Drama (Estancia Harberton, Tierra del Fuego)
ePostcard #106: Skua Drama (Estancia Harberton, Tierra del Fuego) Estancia Harberton is rich in history, but most visitors today come to see its penguins. Isla Martillo, one of several small islands belonging to the estancia, was originally used for grazing sheep, but...
ePostcard #105: Lichen Forests (Tierra del Fuego)
ePostcard #105: Lichen Forests (Tierra del Fuego) Exploring the beautiful lichen gardens that grace the trees and forest floor of the Magellanic rainforest in Tierra del Fuego opens a window on an amazing world. If you were able to count all of the different kinds of...
ePostcard #104: Witches’ Brooms & Rust Cups (Tierra del Fuego)
ePostcard #104: Witches' Brooms & Rust Cups (Tierra del Fuego) Rust fungi get their name because they are most commonly observed as deposits of powdery rust-colored, yellowish or blackish spores on plant surfaces. Rust fungi are obligate plant pathogens that only...
ePostcard #103: Under the Mistletoe (Tierra del Fuego)
ePostcard #103: Under the Mistletoe (Tierra del Fuego) The traditional yuletide mistletoes that most of us are familiar with are the native European species, Viscum album, and the native North American species, Phoradendron leucarpum. References to mistletoe date back...
ePostcard #102: In Darwin’s Footsteps: Pan del Indio
ePostcard #102: In Darwin's Footsteps: Pan del Indio Darwin's famous fungus, ‘Pan del Indio’ (Indian Bread) in Spanish, belongs to a highly evolved group of parasitic fungi that grow exclusively on species of southern beech (Nothofagus spp.). As my photographs...
ePostcard #101: Exploring Magellanic Temperate Rainforests
ePostcard #101: Exploring Magellanic Temperate Rainforests Tierra del Fuego is a land of striking contrasts—cool-temperate rainforests, miniature bryophyte forests, elegant orchids, the snow-capped Andes, azure-tinted glaciers, Magellanic penguins, Andean condors,...