Picture Posts
tqa | March 14, 2008
This photo quiz is a bit different from the others I've done so far. Instead of giving you a full picture, I'm going to put up a piece of the image and a hint. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to try to figure out what this is a picture of.
First, the picture:
Now, the hint: This item shares a name with a place where it's never been.
I'll post the answer (or possibly a new hint) on Tuesday.
tqa | March 4, 2008
Here's another picture quiz for you. The picture below was taken in February of 2005, just off the coast in Oahu. Can you identify the piece of equipment that the two people in the picture are using, and do you know what it's used for? The answer will be posted on Thursday.
tqa | February 29, 2008
I took the picture below at Ka'ena Point, Oahu in January of 2006. In this picture, there are two Hawaiian Monk Seals. (They can be hard to spot, so I've marked the two animals in a second version of the picture below the fold.) Here's the quiz question that goes with this image: without recourse to Google, estimate the percentage of the total population of the species that can be seen in this one picture.
(Click on the pictures to view larger versions.)
tqa | October 5, 2007
Last week, I had a picture of a live spider for you to identify. Most of the guesses came quickly, and were absolutely correct - the spider in the picture was a Spiny-Backed Orbweaver. This week's arthropod might be a little more challenging.
The picture below features a pinned museum specimen, and was taken through a light microscope at about 40x magnification. The edge of a quarter appears in the photo for scale. The species in question is unique to the island of Hawaii, and is found on the wetter slopes of the younger volcanoes.
Good luck. I'll post either the answer (if someone…
tqa | September 28, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some pictures of some large spiders and asked for help in identifying one of them. Jerry Cates of Bugs In The News got back to me quite quickly, and identified the mystery spider as Nephila clavipes - the same species as the other ones shown in that post.
I took some more spider pictures this week. I've identified the species. Can you? The pictures are below the fold, along with some information about the size and where it was spotted. I'll post my identification on Monday.
The spider in these two pictures was a little less than an inch long (approx 3/4"-7…
tqa | September 11, 2007
I was out walking yesterday morning when I saw several very large spiders sitting on webs. I had my camera with me, so I shot a bunch of pictures, and got a couple of really nice ones. I think I've managed to identify the species for a couple of the spiders, but there's one that I'm not quite sure of.
I'm pretty sure that three of the spiders are golden orb spiders (Nephila clavipes). The body shape is right, the markings are right, the site (League City, TX) is within the known range of the species, the habitat (marshy scrub along the bank of Clear Creek) is right, and the behavior (head…