Black Robins In 1976, conservationist Don Merton disembarked from a boat in tempestuous seas and ascended 600 feet up a rock stack known as Little Mangere Island. This spit is a tiny member of the Chatham Islands, which rest 400 miles east of New Zealand’s South Island. Little Mangere covers just 37 acres, a mere blip […]
An Entire Species in Two Buckets [The naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make one of the volumes of our earth’s history; and, as a few lost letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of the numerous forms of life which
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The Frog Romeo This handsome fella is Romeo: Romeo – photo by Matias Careaga His bio features the following info: Height: 0′ 2″ Build: Stocky Status: Never married Children: No Want children?: Definitely Location: Bolivia Smoker?: No way Drinker?: Moderately For fun I like to: Leg days at the gym If you’re part of the
The Many Flavors of the Moon The dominant body of our solar system is, of course, the life-giving sun. And, though we can observe other stars and planets in the night sky, the second-most prominent entity is easily the moon. Today, we denote a year by the time it takes to orbit our star, but
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Sierra Madre Writer, director, and actor John Huston created some of the most famous pieces in film history. A few of his standouts include The Maltese Falcon, the Asphalt Junge, The African Queen, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Three of those four partnered Huston with screen legend Humphrey Bogart, including 1948’s Treasure, considered one of the greatest adventure films
Mojave Max Many Americans are familiar with Punxsutawney Phil, the prognosticating groundhog of Pennsylvania, and a slew of other weather-predicting rodents, including Buckeye Chuck, Wiarton Willie, Dunkirk Dave, and Staten Island Chuck. We rouse these groundhogs from hibernation on February 2 for the purpose of telling us the future of the struggle between winter and spring.
Flaco, the Owl of Central Park On the night of February 2, workers at the Central Park Zoo, a 6.5-acre facility in the southeast corner of New York City’s famous garden, started the rounds to check on the animals. When they approached the enclosure that housed a Eurasian eagle-owl, named Flaco, they discovered a gaping
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Nazaré and the World’s Largest Waves Like tornadoes and mountains, ocean waves are a form that seems to have a primal impact on humans. Their shapes, sounds, and monotonies are alluring, but they also feature a fear-inducing monstrosity. The looming tsunami wave is a moving wall from which one cannot escape. Millions of years of
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Horsepower Sometimes the units we use are downright bizarre. The metric system makes all sorts of sense, but, in the United States, we’ve decided to stick with standards that include the width of human feet (foot), the width of human thumbs (inch), the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day
500 Days in Timecave “I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.” –Beatriz Flamini On 21 November 2021, mountaineer and endurance athlete Beatriz Flamini descended into a Spanish cave. Russia had not invaded Ukraine. Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t dead. The James Webb Space Telescope had not yet probed the cosmos. When Flamini emerged from the cave
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