Bar Tailed Godwit

Lots of stress. Packing.

Art

Now that I have a nice protective layer on the sphinx divide the pieces of the mold off and put a coat on one piece

glaze rabbit and fly

raku fire rabbit and fly

Animal

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmrfsc/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The bar tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri) breeds in Alaska and then winters in Australia. They complete this migration in one non-stop flight of over 6400 miles it can take them 175 hours. This is the longest non-stop flight known in any bird and they do this without feeding. Before they leave they double their body weight yet despite all the physical activity they do not arrive in Australia completely emaciated. Around the time of the flight their internal food processing organs shrink greatly in size and it is thought that this helps to balance out the new fat reserves they have just put on. The other subspecies have similarly long migrations ssp.lapponica goes from Scandinavia to southern Africa and ssp.menzbieri goes from Northern Asia to New Zealand.

Texas Threadsnake

Art

waiting on the kiln

Animal

Photo by LA Dawson

The Texas threadsnake (Leptotyphlops dulcis) is a small burrowing snake from the southwest United States and Mexico. They are well adapted to life underground and only surface when their habitat floods. Their eyes have been reduced to vestigial eyespots. Eastern screech owls will catch these snake alive and release the in their nests. The snake prey on larva and nest debris in the nest that might be detrimental to the baby owls. Owls with a threadsnake in their nests grew faster and had a lower mortality rate.

Crested Auklet

Art

Still carving the rabbit

Animal

The crested auklet (Aethia cristatella) nests in giant colonies numbering sometimes over 1 million birds in the Bering Sea. They are said to smell strongly like tangerines, so strongly in fact that humans can smell crested auklet colonies for miles. It is thought that the birds use the scent to find their colonies. Crested auklets eat mostly very small invertebrates such as krill and copepods.

Sloan's Urania

We have a lot of packing to do. I'm also going to probably have to give up a lot of the found objects I've gathered in the studio. Hopefully I will find some people that could use boxes of high quality garbage.

Art

still carving the rabbit

Hopefully bisque firing the rabbit and soldier fly

Animal

Sloan's Urania (Urania sloanus) was a day flying moth with interference based colors similar in appearance to the Lolonandriana I mentioned a while ago. It was native to Jamaica and has not been seen since 1895. It is thought that it was wiped out as the Jamaican low land forests were cleared for farm land. Currently only one preserved specimen of the moth exists in the Peale collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. It was named after the Muse Urania that specialized in astronomy and astrology.

Fire Beetle

Art

carve rabbit

Animal

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctam/ / CC BY 2.0

The fire beetle (Pyrophorus noctilucus) has the brightest bioluminescence of any insect. It is bright enough to read by at 45 millilamberts. Unlike a firefly it can not turn off it's bioluminescence but it can brighten and dim. The bioluminescent spots are on it's thorax and resemble LED's. It is native to Central and South America as well as the Caribbean.

Atlantic Croaker

Big life changes this weekend.

Art

carve rabbit

Animal

http://www.flickr.com/photos/88158121@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

The Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus) is a member of the drum family that occurs along the east coast of the United States. They are the loudest of the drums and produce sound by vibrating their swim bladders with special sonic muscles. They create sounds for a number of reasons most often to attract mates or when they are distressed, they have also been observed to make a knocking sound in the presence of juveniles. They are an important food fish and as far as saltwater food fish go are doing reasonably well (declining but in a less rapid way then many) and not caught in a hideously destructive manner. On the downside they are full of PCBs. They breed quickly and grow to breeding age at around 2 years, though they can live for 6 to 8 years.

Sound of an Atlantic croaker croaking

Sarcastic Fringehead

feet

Art

finish carving cricket and cory and fire the pieces

study for the net +

Animal

Photo by Magnus Kjaergaard

The sarcastic fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi) is a relative of blennies from the southwestern coast of North America. They spend most of their time hiding in crevices and eat small fish and invertebrates. Their mouthes are larger then you would expect. It has been reported that they are fairly aggressive and will occasionally charge scuba divers. 

A video of two sarcastic fringeheads fighting.

Synthetoceras tricornatus

It looks like I will be taking my network + on 6/22. 

After the exotic feline rescue center we went to Mammoth Cave and Crystal Onyx cave. I felt very rushed through Mammoth cave, did see a cute grey bat though. Crystal Onyx cave while smaller was very impressive and had a lot of formations. It also was a prehistoric burial ground though the bodies were not in an accessible area. The tour guide was pleasantly snarky and seemed to very interested in geology (and was somewhat put out that we were not particularly knowledgeable on the subject).

Art

goal for the week 7hrs

make clay

work on the figure with the anubis mask

Animal

drawing by Arthur Weasley

Synthetoceras tricornatus was an artiodactyl (relative of camels) that inhabited North America during the Miocene. The males had a large "Y"shaped horn as well as enlarged canines. These were probably used in territorial disputes. It is thought that the horns may have been covered in tough skin.

Ebony jewelwing

The vacation is over now. I had a good time we stopped several places and saw a lot neat things. We stopped first at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Indiana. I got several good pictures of large cats. If you have never been to it and like to visit large cats I highly recommend it the cats there seem reasonably happy and active. I don't recommend bringing very small children as they seem to kind of excite the predatory side of quite a few of them. I'll get into some of the other stuff later in the week. 

Here is an upside-down puma

Art 

goal for the week 9hrs

fire tiles

make clay

work on Anubis masked figure

net +

Animal

The ebony jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata) is a damselfly from northeastern North America. I happened to see a lot of them this weekend at a wildlife refuge we stopped at on the way back.  I had been previously unaware there were black winged damselflies and thought I would share. They are sexually dimorphic the females have a white spot on their wings and the males have solid black wings. They eat small arthropods and tend to live near small creeks.

Here is a better photo of a male

photo by HenryMcLin

Amazon Molly

Stuart and I are going out of town for the weekend. I probably won't be updating this weekend as I don't think I will have net access.

Art

We are going out town so the goal won't really apply this week

work on floor tiles for piece

Animal
The Amazon Molly (Poecilla formosa) is a small live bearing fish from northeastern Mexico and the southern United States. All Amazon mollies are female and nearly genetically identical. They reproduce via gynogenesis and though they must mate with the male of a different species of molly to reproduce they do not include any of the male's genetic material in their offspring.

Giant Palouse Earthworm

Art

goal for the week 15hrs

Animal

In the Palouse area of Idaho and Washington state there is a 3ft white earthworm that smells of lilies. The giant worm also will spit as a defense mechanism. The giant Palouse earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) was believed extinct but a specimen was recovered in 2005 along with several reliable sightings. Since it was rediscovered many conservation groups would like to list it as an endangered species as its habitat is disappearing and it was once described as abundant and is now is very rare. The U.S Fish and Wildlife service has rejected the request of these groups to list the worm citing lack of evidence. It has been implicated that the U.S Fish and Wildlife service's intentions were more politically motivated in rejecting the worm then based on lack of evidence.

Red spotted newt

In the network + 2009 book I've been reading they go a bit overboard with the security section. They start out perfectly reasonably with firewalls, various network set ups, and encryption and then they moved to mantraps, 8ft fences with razor wire, and guard dogs. I suppose hackers would not be expecting a guard dog in the MDF. They open the dog suddenly an angry German Shepard flies out at them. The night crew and I at work then talked about other animals what could guard and MDF. We went through the usual big cats, poisonous snakes, and crocodiles. We eventually decided that the Cassowary might be the best choice as they would first confuse and then eviscerate the intruder.  

Art

Goal for the week 17hrs

work on the sphinx.

Animal

Photo by Janet.powell

The red spotted newt (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens) is a mildly toxic newt that has an interesting life cycle. They start out aquatic like other amphibians, then they go through a very cute terrestrial stage where they are tiny bright red newts that disperse to other ponds, and once they find a pond they return to a fully aquatic stage as adults and loose most of their bright coloration. The red spotted newt's range some how just misses us, but they can be found in northern and southern illinois.

Red-tailed tropic bird

Today we went to see "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" as part of the EbertFest thing going on downtown. This particular movie was put on by the Champaign Mental Health board and somewhat loosely tied to the rest of EbertFest.  It was also the first movie I've ever been where it was announced they had counselors ready if you needed to talk to someone about the movie.

Art

work on the sphinx

Animal

The red-tailed tropic bird (Phaeton rubricauda) is an open ocean sea bird found in the Pacific Ocean. They are not terribly related to any of the other living birds though they look to me like penguins with all of the necessary changes needed to make them fly. The red-tailed tropic bird is the largest and rarest of the tropic birds. They generally only exhibit one red streamer feather at a time except during the breeding season when both are displayed. During their mating display they also appear to fly backwards. Their long red feathers were prized by the Maori and occasionally used as trade goods. In Hawaiian mythology the red-tailed tropic bird was the offspring of the gray migrating tern.

Photo of a very cute red-tailed tropic bird chick

Video about red-tailed tropic birds with an older chick

Ajolote Lizard

 Art

Goal for the week 18hrs

Today

Work on the sphinx

Animal

The Ajolote Lizard (Bipes biporus) is a two legged Amphisbaenian (worm lizards sort of the odd group out in the snakes and lizards of Squamata). They are found in California and Mexico. This reptile spends most of it's time burrowing, often near mesquite shrubs using it's legs to do most of the digging. They will occasionally leave there burrows at night to hunt surface dwelling insects, but they tend to be awkward on the surface. They eat mostly ground dwelling invertebrates and they have fairly large teeth (Here is a skull). Their ears are unusual for Amphisbaenians in that they have extra folds of skin and fibrous tissue that may be related to what developed into the epihyal bone found in the ears of mammals according to Ernest Wever and Carl Gans. It seems that this ear set up also gives them better hearing then other Amphisbaenians.

Video of one moving around

Cardinal

I have progress shot of the sphinx so far it is now ready for detailing.

Art

Goal for the week 20hrs

Today

 work on the sphinx

look up and order materials for stop motion puppets.

Animal

photo by Mulletar

In Natchez mythology the cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) brought fire to humanity. There are several legends as to how the cardinal got it red color. In an Iroquoi story vulture gave cardinal his feathers when vulture decided that he did not look good in red while trying on the feathers of every bird. The cardinal got his red feathers from wolf in a Cherokee story in which  raccoon seals wolf's eyes shut with excrement while wolf is sleeping. Cardinal helps wolf get get the excrement off his eyes and as a reward wolf gives cardinal some red paint. The Algonquin have a story for how cardinal ended up a bird at all. In the story cardinal and blackbird were men that lived near a lake one day they went out of their normal territory to gather wild rice. The people in that territory asked them what they were doing and they explained that they were gathering wild rice because they were tired of wild potatoes. The people that lived in the area with the wild rice decided to kill cardinal and blackbird and steal their potatoes. Cardinal and blackbird got wind of this and fled the people in the form of birds. They never returned to human form for fear that the people would kill them. 

Channel Island Fox

Today we went out to the Boneyard Arts Festival in Urbana and ran into Andrew at some sort of weird (fake?) punk fashion show. He went to the other galleries with us. We also ran into one of my co-worker's mother who does wildlife photography. 

Art

Goal for the week 7.5 hrs

Today

I had not added an internal armature to the sphinx and I noticed its front legs were sinking in on themselves so I added one today.

work on sphinx

Animal 

Photo by the U.S National Park Service

The Channel Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) is dwarf fox related to gray foxes that lives only on the Channel Islands of California. They are the smallest foxes in North America at only around 4 lbs and standing 6 inches at the shoulder. They split off gray foxes after becoming isolated on the islands about 18000 years ago and have since become a separate species. Aside from their small size they are also different from gray foxes in that they have lost two vertebra. They are critically endangered for a variety of reasons. To begin several invasive species were introduced to the islands such as bison, cats, goats, and feral pigs. The bald eagles that had been on the island (and had not been preying on the foxes) died off due to problems with DDT and the golden eagle which had priorly not really inhabited the island was drawn in by the feral pigs and took the bald eagle's place. The golden eagle as a secondary prey item started preying on the foxes which were not well adjusted to having a regular predator around. Then the declining foxes which had been on an island mostly free of canine diseases picked up distemper from domestic dogs which wiped out quite a lot of them. Then in an effort to protect the endangered Loggerhead Shrike the US Navy was culling the foxes to keep them from preying on the birds, they stopped in 2000 as the foxes had become critically endangered as well. 

Black-crested coquette

I got very strange looks at our local hobby store today when getting puppet supplies. 

Art

Goal for the week 19hrs

Today

assemble first bits of armature for the fingers of the first stop motion puppet

drill into Serenity's base add weights and re-seal.

Animal

Photo by Jerryoldenettel

The black-crested coquette (Lophornis helenae) is a crested hummingbird from forested areas of Central America and Hawaii. It is being considered for the red list as there is speculation that there may be less then 10,000 of them left. Oddly its markings look a great deal like a 2 inch nectar eating sphinx moth Aellopos titan even down to having an antenna like crest. I was not able to find any reason for the mimicry, such as the moth being toxic, so I guess that is a mystery. Here a link to a picture of the moth.

Man o' war fish

Last night the head fell off  the sphinx and got was fairly smashed so I spent most of last night doing reconstructive surgery.  

Art

Goal for the week 17.25 hours

today

do the initial sculpt on a new pair of hands for serenity

paint boxes

Animal

The man-o-war fish (Nomeus gronovii) is a small (8 inch) drift fish that forms a symbiotic relationship with siphonophores like the Portuguese man o' war. It is theorized that it is immune to the Physalia's stinging cells. The fish gains protection from predators by living among the deadly tentacles and it in turn lures other fish into the man o' war. They may also remove debris from the tentacles of the siphonophores and occasionally eat the tentacles. They may leave the man o' war when they leave the juvenile stage. It is the only member of it's genus Nomeus.

photo of the real fish

Crested Anole

Someone knocked over and broke one of the pieces I had at Cinema Gallery so I need to see what needs to be done to repair that. If I have to replace the hands on this one again it will be kind of funny and the fourth time counting on this piece. The first time I made the hands for the piece and they were probably the best hands I'd ever made I got the veins of the back just right and then I dropped them as I was loading them in the kiln and was just sick. I tried to fix them but putting greenware porcelain back together is kind of iffy and in this case it ended up a lost cause. The next set not nearly as good I dropped on the way out of the kiln. The third set broke as I was attaching the piece to the base and dropped the whole piece. This last set I had made a little bigger and fired a lot higher and they had been good for months then someone knocked it over at the Gallery. I'll try them in ceramic one more time but it happens again I'm going to cast the friggin things in metal.

Art

Goal for the week 19.25 hrs

Today

make clay

look at Serenity and access damage

work on sphinx

Animal

photo by alumroot

When Stuart and I went to New Orleans I kept seeing a type of anole I was not familiar with, along with all the green and brown anoles and blue tailed skinks. It was brown and had a large back crest, and I was really curious as to what this thing was, you'd think I'd have seen it in a petstore somewhere with as many as there were. I speculated on what this odd anole with a crest's name might be, perhaps it had been named after the researcher that discovered it, or any number of other things. I hopefully did not annoy Stuart to much fixating on a strange lizard. We finally found a few in a tank at the aquarium and they were in fact the crested anole, so much for creative names. The crested anole (Anolis cristatellus) is not native to the U.S., actually being native to Puerto Rico, but have been fairly successful in establishing themselves. The males have crests bright orange dewlaps but the females do not.

North American Teratorn

There are a lot of things going on this weeks so it has been a really bad art week.

Art

stuff

Animal

photo of a California Condor (which should have a very similar build) by bsterling that was then heavily modified.

The North American Teratorn (Teratornis merriami) was the largest flying bird man ever saw they went extinct around the end of the last ice age. While with it's 12ft wingspan it was not the largest flying bird that ever was it was still fairly impressive and it was thought that after went extinct stories about it endured as a supernatural creature. There are theories that it was the origin of the thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are large intelligent bird shaped spirits that can control storms and thunder you find in a lot of forms of them in the mythology of a number of Native American tribes. In Wisconsin there is a lake called Devil's lake (Tawacunchukdah) that I'm very fond of that gets tied into the thunderbirds (Wakunja) mythology of the Winnebago. It was supposed to have been a site where the underwater pumas and the thunderbirds had a fight and threw a lot of large rocks and lighting at each other. I got to spend quite a bit of time a kid crawling around on the spent weapons of old gods there. The Cowichan also had a thunderbird (Tzinquaw) that had a fight with a water spirit this one in the form of an Orca. The Sioux had thunderbird had wiped out the Unktehila a dangerous reptilian water monster,  so there seems to be a bit of theme thunderbirds and water spirits not getting along. Not that there were not other giant birds in mythology that were not thunderbirds but may have been influenced by Teratornis. The Miwok had a giant man-eating bird named Yellokin that was eventually killed by eagle and turned into trees by coyote. The Passamaquoddy had a giant bird Wuchowsen that created wind with it's wings.  Cryptozoologists also love these guys, there are occasionally stories about modern giant bird sightings, though many ornithologists point out if there were physical living Teratorns running around the small army (84 million according to a survey in 2000) of American bird watchers probably would have noticed.