Showing posts with label fauna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fauna. Show all posts
Monday, June 9, 2025
Monday, April 21, 2025
Monday, April 7, 2025
Monday, March 17, 2025
Monday, May 20, 2024
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Frankfurt Flora and Fauna
For a Girl Scouts project one year, Clarissa and her troop made posters and shared a pdf of the flora and fauna around the housing compound and the duck pond. Here's some things they saw (and hopefully everything was properly IDed):
Leatherleaf Viburnum (Viburnum rhytidophyllum)
Mallard (Male) - (Anas platyrhynchos)
Mallard (Female) - (Anas platyrhynchos)
Feral Pigeon - (Columba livia domestica)
Carrion Crow - (Corvus corone)
Common Daisy - (Bellis perennis)
Winter Aconite - (Eranthis hyemalis)
Great Cormorant - (Phalacrocorax carbo)
Common Moorhen - (Gallinula chloropus)
Egyptian Goose - (Alopochen aegyptiaca)
European Firebug - (Pyrrhocoris apterus)
Snowdrop Anemone (also called Madonna anemone) - (Anemonoides sylvestris)
Norway Maple - (Acer platanoides)
Deer Mushroom - (Pluteus cervinus)
Oregon Grape - (Berberis aquifolium)
You will have to come visit us and check out the poster, if you want to know exactly where things were spotted and three fun facts about each!
Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Wrapping up home leave 2021.....
The majority of our home leave 2021 was spent in Charleston, South Carolina....likely our last home leave there as we now have our own place in Florida. Looking forward to landing and everyone can come to us (as oppose to running around like we have the last 3 home leaves and R&Rs). We make the big flight over the pond, so a drive down to Orlando is not too bad.
We spent a lot of time running around to doctor's appointments (more than we had planned - someone got contacts, which involved a lot practicing, trying putting them in and out, etc). Based on the past two home leaves, it would not be HL if I didn't get something removed (luckily no cancer this time, just an annoying cyst that wouldn't resolve itself). We enjoyed plenty of time at our favorite restaurants as well. I was also still working remotely all HL (super fun to plan interviews at a reasonable hour in Qatar and not insanely early on the east coast).
Here is a picture of the cousins playing in their natural habitat (aka on electronics)....at least it appeared they were all playing the same game. After a relaxing Father's day brunch (that was on the only time we could get all the teens together...lol).
Given Frankfurt will be a lot colder the majority of the year and we won't have our own yard, we used up the rest of the water balloons we had leftover from Doha.
Airborne Ninja?
Someone was double dog dared to smash a balloon on their head...lol.
We took lots of walks with our new camera (upgraded to the Nikon Z6II mirrorless camera). So we played with the new camera
A Great Egret (Ardea alba) wading at the river's edge.
Deer on Deer Walk (street name.....just a bit ironic)
Osprey (Pandion sp.) on an electric line.
Eastern king snake (Lampropeltis getula) just outside the front door!
Monday, August 9, 2021
Friday, April 3, 2020
Purple Island
So overseas, several troops of Girl Scouts makes up a committee (they are called service units stateside). The committee here in Doha is decent size (about 120 girls), covering nearly every level from first year daisies to first year seniors, and we (in addition to being a troop leader I also volunteered to be a committee member) try to put on a couple committee wide events every year. This gives older and younger girls a chance to interact, leaders a chance to talk with other leaders, and have the girls work together on a big project. One of the leaders of a junior troop organized a day trip out to Purple Island (also known as Al Khor Island or Jazirat bin Ghanim) at the beginning of March.
Purple Island is about an hour drive from our house. The leader had worked out a location with bathrooms and some tents that was also within walking distance of the island for us to use during the day (always a good thing with lots of girls). In the morning, we headed over across a pedestrian bridge to Purple Island for a trash clean up. I can't remember the final committee number but I think it was about 20 bags, some tires, a big metal bar, and a gasoline can. Clarissa was super excited to find a cooking pot with a soda can inside!
Any way, the event was girl-led and the girls were picking up the trash. I was pulling a wagon with water bottles. So I may or may not have gotten distracted by the scenery and just took pictures while they were cleaning up!
This yellow beauty is the desert hyacinth (Cistanche tubulosa). It is a parasitic plant. The desert hyacinth doesn't have any chlorophyll and steals water and nutrients from other plants. In the top picture, it is parasitizing the green glasswort (Arthrocnemum macrostachyum).
Beautiful purple sea lavender (Limonium axillare) blooming. Contrary to what you may be thinking, Purple Island did not get its name from the sea lavender. The name comes from the Kassite period on the island (1400 to 1100 BC) when a purple shellfish dye was obtained from the Murex snail. What color purple? Think of the Qatari flag....that color!
A friendly little Talon crab, also called a mottled lightfoot crab, (Grapsus albolineatus) scurried across the hot sand. The girls stopped picking up trash for a bit to check it out. We were working on our Marine Life Badge after all.
An unusual rock formation on the island. As I mentioned with the purple dye, the island has be inhabited off and on. Archeological digs have found evidence of some possible Neolithic inhabitants used the island as a campsite (around 4500 BC). Some pottery suggests suggests the island was also inhabited by a Bahrain-based civilization (2000 to 1750 BC).
These are some fruits (Kanar) ripening on a Sidra tree (Ziziphus spina-christi). The Sidra tree is a very symbolic tree in Qatar (there is a hospital named after it, they designed their convention center after it).
After we returned to the property, we had lunch, finished up some badge work, we let the girls have some downtime as we did some celestial badge work (only one person can look through the telescope at a time), they did SWAPs, we built fires and learned to put them out, we ate dinner (which was not soon enough apparently), and of course made S'mores. I think they all had a great day, I know I enjoyed the day in the sun.
Purple Island is about an hour drive from our house. The leader had worked out a location with bathrooms and some tents that was also within walking distance of the island for us to use during the day (always a good thing with lots of girls). In the morning, we headed over across a pedestrian bridge to Purple Island for a trash clean up. I can't remember the final committee number but I think it was about 20 bags, some tires, a big metal bar, and a gasoline can. Clarissa was super excited to find a cooking pot with a soda can inside!
Any way, the event was girl-led and the girls were picking up the trash. I was pulling a wagon with water bottles. So I may or may not have gotten distracted by the scenery and just took pictures while they were cleaning up!
This yellow beauty is the desert hyacinth (Cistanche tubulosa). It is a parasitic plant. The desert hyacinth doesn't have any chlorophyll and steals water and nutrients from other plants. In the top picture, it is parasitizing the green glasswort (Arthrocnemum macrostachyum).
Beautiful purple sea lavender (Limonium axillare) blooming. Contrary to what you may be thinking, Purple Island did not get its name from the sea lavender. The name comes from the Kassite period on the island (1400 to 1100 BC) when a purple shellfish dye was obtained from the Murex snail. What color purple? Think of the Qatari flag....that color!
A friendly little Talon crab, also called a mottled lightfoot crab, (Grapsus albolineatus) scurried across the hot sand. The girls stopped picking up trash for a bit to check it out. We were working on our Marine Life Badge after all.
An unusual rock formation on the island. As I mentioned with the purple dye, the island has be inhabited off and on. Archeological digs have found evidence of some possible Neolithic inhabitants used the island as a campsite (around 4500 BC). Some pottery suggests suggests the island was also inhabited by a Bahrain-based civilization (2000 to 1750 BC).
Back at the property we were staying at, there were some other neat plants. Near the restroom, I found the flowers of a date palm tree (Phoenix dactylifera). I'm 97% sure these are male flowers. Had I realized there were male and female date palm trees with different flowers, I would have looked closer when I saw them and not tried to distinguish just from a photo.
These are some fruits (Kanar) ripening on a Sidra tree (Ziziphus spina-christi). The Sidra tree is a very symbolic tree in Qatar (there is a hospital named after it, they designed their convention center after it).
After we returned to the property, we had lunch, finished up some badge work, we let the girls have some downtime as we did some celestial badge work (only one person can look through the telescope at a time), they did SWAPs, we built fires and learned to put them out, we ate dinner (which was not soon enough apparently), and of course made S'mores. I think they all had a great day, I know I enjoyed the day in the sun.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Holiday 2019 Visitors - The Birds
Our first fall here in Doha, one of our neighbors mentioned he goes birding in the desert, leaving around 5 am on weekends. I was busy with Girl Scouts, the holidays happened, and I never got around to contacting him (and I'm a night owl....5 am really isn't my jam). So I messaged him last fall and asked if he was going out when my in-laws were going to be here. Jim really enjoys the critters in his backyard and I thought he'd get a kick out seeing the birds around here. We ended up heading out on the last day of classes for the kids (and the day before our neighbor was wheels up as his company was moving him back to Texas - so it was one last hurrah for him). He took us out to someplace in the middle of the country (you know it's the middle of the country as you pass a power lines crossroads of sorts).
Our neighbor said the property was some sort of water treatment/holding ponds and that a neighboring farm grew some sort of feed grass and was doing lots of watering (with the treated water from the ponds). Needless to say, we weren't going to jump in and swim in the ponds (and there were plenty of signs warning us not to)!
We saw a lot of white-eared bulbul (Pycnonotus leucotis). It was very overcast, so it was hard to get good photos. There were also a lot of doves mixed in with the bulbuls when we first arrived along some fencing.
A cormorant flying overhead - either a Great cormorant or a Socotra cormorant - it's hard to tell from the photo.
A common redshank (Tringa totanus) - I think.
I think this is our same little common redshank flying off into the construction area.
Flock of cattle egret flying overhead.
It was around here we saw a flamingo! It was flying overhead pretty quickly and I was not fast enough with the focus - so no picture. Our neighbor said that while flamingos typically flock, there is one "outcast" flamingo that is regularly seen solo in this holding pond area. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it!
I think this is some sort of Old World flycatcher.
I just thought the landscape was cool. It's not all sand dunes forever, but there are bits of brush-like plants here and there.
This looks like a black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus).
A whole flock of black-winged stilts.
Cool tree in the middle of a pond.
Some cattle egrets in a tree.
A crested lark (Galerida cristata). Our neighbor said these were easy to identify from their up/down flying behavior around the desert floor.
A flock of some black and white bird.
A flock of cattle egrets hanging out on the irrigation equipment.
A cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) taking flight.
A small hawk/bird of prey.
So, that was our morning. We got home and had breakfast with Ann and Richard! We saw a good variety of species. I know we saw a few more species than I got pictures of (ie - the flamingo, doves, there were some ducks in the first holding pond, etc). I hadn't realized this when planning it but even though Jim has had bird feeders and likes to identify the birds (and snakes) around his house, he had never gone birding before (majoring in Biology, this is frequent field trip for a lot of classes, so for shorebirds, I can typical identify general categories but we keep moving regions so species identification gets tough without ID books/the googles). Score two points for introducing Jim to new activity in a new country! Woohoo!
Our neighbor said the property was some sort of water treatment/holding ponds and that a neighboring farm grew some sort of feed grass and was doing lots of watering (with the treated water from the ponds). Needless to say, we weren't going to jump in and swim in the ponds (and there were plenty of signs warning us not to)!
We saw a lot of white-eared bulbul (Pycnonotus leucotis). It was very overcast, so it was hard to get good photos. There were also a lot of doves mixed in with the bulbuls when we first arrived along some fencing.
A cormorant flying overhead - either a Great cormorant or a Socotra cormorant - it's hard to tell from the photo.
A common redshank (Tringa totanus) - I think.
Flock of cattle egret flying overhead.
It was around here we saw a flamingo! It was flying overhead pretty quickly and I was not fast enough with the focus - so no picture. Our neighbor said that while flamingos typically flock, there is one "outcast" flamingo that is regularly seen solo in this holding pond area. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it!
I think this is some sort of Old World flycatcher.
I just thought the landscape was cool. It's not all sand dunes forever, but there are bits of brush-like plants here and there.
This looks like a black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus).
A whole flock of black-winged stilts.
Cool tree in the middle of a pond.
Some cattle egrets in a tree.
A crested lark (Galerida cristata). Our neighbor said these were easy to identify from their up/down flying behavior around the desert floor.
A flock of some black and white bird.
A flock of cattle egrets hanging out on the irrigation equipment.
A cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) taking flight.
A small hawk/bird of prey.
So, that was our morning. We got home and had breakfast with Ann and Richard! We saw a good variety of species. I know we saw a few more species than I got pictures of (ie - the flamingo, doves, there were some ducks in the first holding pond, etc). I hadn't realized this when planning it but even though Jim has had bird feeders and likes to identify the birds (and snakes) around his house, he had never gone birding before (majoring in Biology, this is frequent field trip for a lot of classes, so for shorebirds, I can typical identify general categories but we keep moving regions so species identification gets tough without ID books/the googles). Score two points for introducing Jim to new activity in a new country! Woohoo!
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