October 2011
1 post
No Calamari Here
Photo: Hans Hillewaert
While trying to figure out InDesign, I came across a fun fact about squid. (Here’s how it happened—I was trying to figure out how to tint a photo, and one thing led to another, and you know I’d rather be looking up fun facts then going through a web tutorial). Anyway, here it is. The sepia tones in your great-grandparents’ photographs come from cuttlefish ink. This made...
September 2011
2 posts
Fireflies of all kinds →
Wondering why there are no fireflies in California led to this post, for The Last Word On Nothing. I also came upon a new cocktail recipe. Vodka, grapefruit juice + grenadine = The Firefly.
March 2011
1 post
Happy St. Patrick's Day →
A scientifically-minded tribute, in song, to alcohol. The lyrics are attached to the video for extra credit.
February 2011
1 post
The apprentice naturalist's favorite app →
I wish my plant and bird ID skills were better, but now I have help. With Project Noah, I can find the answers to my “what’s that?” questions, and users can also document what they see to aid citizen science projects. Cool!
January 2011
1 post
Snowy Owls and Ginger Whipped Cream
For the last year or so, the number of owls arriving at this house has increased exponentially. We haven’t entered the wizarding world (and it’s too bad, too—I’d rather have a snowy owl deliver my mail over breakfast than have to check my phone, computer, mailbox …). But we do have a two-year-old who has developed an obsession for owls.
Part of this is my own doing. I’ve found a few great...
December 2010
1 post
I thought it was impossible to go wrong with dark chocolate, but I was wrong. Beware of bars made with “dark chocolate liqueur” from Cost Plus. Blech!
October 2010
4 posts
A Post that is Full of Beans
On a friend’s farm early this fall, I learned about this amazing property of bean leaves. They stick. My friend Tessa picked the leaves and stuck them on our kids’ shirts, calling them “leaf badges.”
These leaf badges are appealing to me—partially, I think, because I always looked in envy at the Cub Scouts in my elementary school classes. Not only did they get to wear their scouting uniforms...
September 2010
3 posts
3 tags
A full moon kicks off autumn—but what should we eat to celebrate? http://tinyurl.com/3xvfyeu
Overheard on the zoo train: Giraffes have purple tongues to protect their 18-inch-long lenguas from the strong African sun.
Great White Sharks and Great Yellow Tomato Soup
One of our faithful readers has commented that there’s little fauna to be seen here at Fork and Fauna. So a special post for you, you know who you are, about charismatic megafauna, no less—sharks!
This time of year always seems to bring more reports of shark sightings from the California coast. A standup paddler took this video at San Onofre, a popular surf spot.
In an interview with KPBS,...
August 2010
5 posts
5 tags
Hurricanes, sea color, and a California storm in a...
We may see fairly regular fires, earthquakes, and floods in California, but we hardly ever get full-force hurricanes. Our combination of cool offshore waters (even in summer—I only leave my 4:3 wetsuit at home a few days each summer) and coastal upwelling dampen the strength of big tropical cyclones that might be heading our way. And they rarely do: hurricanes usually head west-northwest after...
Up late cooking and just ate an entire fried eggplant by myself.
1 tag
S'mores update = ice cream sandwiches
For those of you that have been following (thanks, Mom!), no luck yet with the marshmallows. But we did just make ice cream sandwiches with the Graham crackers, Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss, and black mission figs. Suddenly marshmallows seem low-priority.
2 tags
Meteors and Marshmallows: The Friday the 13th...
I’m usually the last to know when it comes to cool astronomical events, but this year, I somehow remembered—weeks ago, even—that the Perseid meteor shower was coming up.
The Perseids are the first meteors I ever saw. In high school, I went to a friend’s cousin’s house in hills to see the show. My friend and I spread out a blanket, and as I drifted in and out of sleep, the pockets of light trailed...
3 tags
Cassini and Chocolate
I’ve been plotting a blog post to kick off this adventure that combines two things I love—cool natural phenomena (meteor showers, weather, monarch migration, grunion runs…) and food. But then yesterday I saw this photo, taken by the Cassini probe as it circles around Saturn. Those points of light in the distance, above Saturn’s rings, are the Alpha Centauri system—the nearest neighbor to our...