Stitched this image from 3 shots with my 45-200mm. Slow lens, so the bokeh effect is somewhat minimized.

This portrait of a miner was done underground at the depth of 400 meters in the oldest gold mine in the world - Berezovskaya Shakhta. Miner distracted from his work and delivered to the appointed location. item posing was minimized.

Boracay 2014

Wetlands are helping minimize or even remediate environmental problems. As part of nature's filtration system wetlands absorb and filter sediments, pollutants, and excess nutrients; recharge groundwater; maintain stream flows; control runoff; store flood waters; reduce erosion; stabilize shorelines; and help regulate atmospheric gases and climate cycles.

Fantastic looking trike, a Triumph to boot but dreadful background which I attempted to minimize. This was taken Sunday 2nd October 2016 as riders came into West Bay which is a meeting point especially on Sundays. The town even has special small parking bays to accommodate the bikes.

The comet looked small with straight ion tail and some others.

 

I noticed that the moon was located near 90 degrees apart from the comet and tried minimizing the effect of the moon light with a circular polarizing filter on a fast telephoto lens, Apo-Elmarit-R 180mmF2.8 at the night. I could make exposure up to 4 minutes at ISO 1,600 and f/2.8, about 13 times longer than the former imaging with FSQ-106ED f5 on November 27, 2015.

 

The result was not so much better than the former frame. The aperture and focal length looked more effective than the combination of better focal ratio and the polarizing filter under the moon light.

 

This frame 933 x 2,033 pixels x 2 was cropped of the original 3,840 x 5,760 pixels. The frame scale is comparable to a frame taken with an optics with 500mm in focal length.

 

Earth Distance: 1.552 AU

Sun Distance: 0.866 AU

 

equipment: Leica Apo-Elmarit-R 180mmF2.8 with Kenko Zeta EX circular Polarizing filter 67mm on the objective and Canon EOS 5Dmk3-sp4, modified by Seo-san on iOptron ZEQ25GT, autoguided with Fujinon 1.28/75mm C-Mount Lens, Pentax X2 Extender, SX Lodestar X2 Autoguider, and PHD Guiding

 

exposure: 4 times 4 minutes at ISO 1,600 and f/2.8

The first exposure began at 19:42:51 and the last at 19:55:18 November 30, 2015 in UTC or 4:42:51 and 4:55:18 December 1, 2015 in JST.

 

site: 1,067m above sea level at lat. 35 21 43 North and long. 138 49 54 East on the eastern slope of Mt. Fuji

I do like to pose with my shoulders back because it minimizes their breadth while enhancing the prominence of my ...um- other "features!"

 

My December minidress shopping binge also brought this shiny metallic minidress to my wardrobe from greatglam.com. I've matched it up with Hanes Alive Barely There panty hose and my black strappy sandals from electriqueboutique.com.

I think this dress clings perfectly!

 

To see more pix of me in other tight, sexy and revealing outfits click this link:

www.flickr.com/photos/kaceycdpix/sets/72157623668202157/

DSC_8175-34

With tandem vacuum, the active working area of the cutter can be divided into front and back processing areas. Minimizing machine idle time, this tandem-production workflow is highly efficient and leads to significant increases in productivity.

Further details: www.zund.com/en/tandemoperation-g3

How often have you wished your image could be higher resolution? Topaz's Gigapixel AI is another artificial intelligence and machine learning tool that is designed to enhance the resolution of your image by analyzing and understanding the image to enlarge whilst minimizing noise and artifacts. Have a look at an example image of a flower taken at the flower dome in Singapore, and how the software can increase the resolution of an image. ------- Discount ------- Topaz has kindly provided a discount code for my viewers if you use the Topaz links below, and when purchasing use the discount code: TRAVISHALE20 you can get up to 20% discount on your purchase. ------- Links ------- Gigapixel AI: bit.ly/2YnAlEf AI Bundle: bit.ly/2H981PQ Radeon RX 580 Graphics Card (eBay): bit.ly/2YgZu3m ------- Social Media ------ Website: bit.ly/1DG47rJ Newsletter: bit.ly/2V6KTFL Facebook: bit.ly/1OARaBV Twitter: www.twitter.com/travishale Instagram: bit.ly/2V5d3km Flickr: bit.ly/2ZYVOVv 500px: bit.ly/1S8wWSj Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/TravisHaleSciencePhotography NB: Some of the links on this site may be affiliate links, these do not change my opinion on products and/or services but allow me to continue to provide (hopefully) useful content to the community. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, it does not change the cost of the item, but I may be provided with a small commission for referring you. For more information, visit: bit.ly/300WcCH

Burrowing Owl, Sinclair Road, Calipatria, CA

 

More than 70 percent of the California Burrowing Owl population is found within the Salton Sea ecosystem.

 

Burrowing Owls make their homes alongside the agriculture irrigation ditches there, sometimes no more than three feet from the road. The Salton Sea is now one of the most reliable places to see the tiny owls.

 

www.allaboutbirds.org/the-burrowing-owls-of-the-salton-sea/

 

The Burrowing Owl’s scientific name, Athene cunicularia, refers to the Greek deity Athena, goddess of wisdom, who was attended by an owl.

 

The second part of their name, cunicularia, comes from the Latin word cunicularis, meaning “pertaining to the rabbit,” probably because they reside in tunnels, like rabbits.

 

Burrowing Owls often nest in colonies, using multiple burrows to increase the chances of their families’ survival in case a predator tries to eat the young. They generally use holes dug by small mammals or tortoises, although they sometimes shape their own holes to some extent. They are very picky when it comes to selecting a nesting location, preferring soft sand and dirt in relatively open areas for good visibility, with an entrance above ground level to avoid flooding.

 

Although nearby commercial and residential development has permanently disrupted many areas, the owls seem to be thriving, largely thanks to efforts on their behalf by the state and by local farmers. The owls prefer to nest under the edges of cement irrigation troughs that line the agricultural fields. The farmers need to keep these areas clear of vegetation to keep the troughs from clogging up, and the owls like these open spaces. Before removing weeds or doing other maintenance work, researchers clearly mark the areas with active burrows and then avoid them to minimize disturbance to the birds.

174/365

 

SOOC except for attempts at minimizing the lens smudge that is driving me crazy.

 

You can see the bag under my eye. Flattering.

 

For my entire adolescence, I pretended to be somebody that I'm not. I went by different names in grocery stores and parks(and made my brother call me by them), had a dozen different pretend games going on at all times with my friends, and wrote journals as different people. I had an imaginary friend who wasn't my companion, but whose life I lived for her, going on adventures in my backyard and neighborhood alone. Nobody ever understood why I found it endlessly fascinating to play by myself.

 

Now that I'm older, I still play pretend, but I do it in the confines of works written by other people. I love it because I'm given the rough edges of a character and challenged to create something believable and relatable from it. Right now I'm Anne Page in Merry Wives of Windsor, and all I know is that she's pretty and that there are 3 different men in pursuit of her hand in marriage. That leaves me so much to create, and I absolutely love driving to rehearsal, because I spend the whole time in character, thinking, breathing, singing, talking as somebody else. And for a few hours each day, everyone has to play along with me. And every evening, three men fall in love with me, and I get married, and I have parents that adore me and friends to call me beautiful and a dance that everyone knows the steps to.

 

I think that's why I love theatre.

Some background:

After the space-worthy conversion of the CVS-101 Prometheus and the SLV-111 Daedalus carriers, these ships were docked with the SDF-1 Macross and it became clear that this new gigantic vessel required a specialized unit with a heavy armament for medium range defense.

The resulting Space Defense Robot (SDR) Phalanx was tailored to this task. Development of the Phalanx began in a hurry, during the already ongoing Space War I in July 2009. Its systems and structural elements were, to save time and minimize development risks, taken over from a pre-war Destroid standard mass production model. The "Type 04" biped chassis from 2001 was common to several Destroid types, including the Tomahawk medium battle robot and the Defender anti-aircraft robot. The main frame from the waist down included a common module which consolidated the thermonuclear reactor and ambulatory OverTechnology system, and for the Phalanx it was combined with a new, jettisonable torso that was suited to space operations and could also act as a rescue capsule with modest independent propulsion. Thanks to this dedicated mission profile, the Phalanx was the best adapted Destroid to space operations, with the best zero-G maneuverability of any Destroid type during Space War I.

 

With this proven basis, the Phalanx quickly reached rollout in December of that year. Armed with dozens of missiles in two large launcher pods, the Phalanx made an excellent semi-mobile missile-based battery. On board of spaceships, the Phalanx also performed as a substitution deployment for the much more complex ADR-04-Mk X Destroid Defender, and it complemented this type with its longer-range guided missile weaponry. Minor Phalanx variants featured additional light close-range armament, such as a head-mounted gatling gun that replaced the original search light array, or more sophisticated sensor arrays. The latter led to the dedicated Mk. XIII version for space operations.

 

During the final battle of Space War I against the Zentraedi Bodol Zer Main Fleet, the Phalanx units, originally delivered in a sand-colored livery, were repainted in dark blue and refitted to fire long-range reaction warheads for use against space warships. The Phalanx’ on board of SDF-1 had their finest hour when the SDF-1 Macross broke through the Zentraedi fleet defenses and entered the interior of the massive Fulbtzs Berrentzs command vessel: all the Phalanx units unleashed their missiles and aided in the swift destruction of the enemy flagship.

 

However, Phalanx production only reached limited numbers, due to the type’s high grade of specialization and its inherent vulnerability in close combat - the Phalanx’ combat operation capability decreases substantially once the missile ordnance had been exhausted. Beyond the initial production on Earth, roughly 20 more Phalanx Destroids were also built aboard the SDF-1 Macross shipboard factories, and many of these were later updated from the Mk. XII to the Mk. XIII standard. Post-Space War I, Phalanx Destroids were deployed as part of defense forces on various military bases and used in the ground attack role as long-range infantry support artillery units, fighting from the second line of battle. Nevertheless, the Phalanx remained a stopgap solution and was quickly followed by the more versatile Destroid "Nimrod" SDR-04-Mk. XIV.

  

Technical Data:

Equipment Type: Space Defense Robot/heavy artillery

Accommodation: One pilot

Government: U.N. Spacy

Manufacturer: Macross Onboard Factories

Introduction: December 2009

 

Dimensions:

Height 12.05 meters overall (11.27 m w/o searchlight array)

Length 5.1 meters

Width 10.8 meters.

Mass: 47.2 metric tons

 

Powerplant:

1x Kranss-Maffai MT828 thermonuclear reactor, developing 2800 shp;

Auxillary Shinnakasu Industry CT 03 miniature thermonuclear generator, output rated at 970 kW.

 

Propulsion:

Biped, with limited zero-G maneuverability through many low-thrust vernier thrusters beneath multipurpose hooks/handles all over the hull.

 

Armament:

2x Howard SHIN-SHM-10 Derringer short-range high-maneuverability self-guided missile pods, one per arm, with 22 missiles each (missiles stored in two rows behind each other).

 

Production Notes:

The rather obscure Destroid Phalanx made its media debut in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Episode 27, and it's actually the only occasion where it appears. Original mecha designer is/was Miyatake Kazutaka.

  

The kit and its assembly:

I have been pushing this build away from the workbench for a long time. I was – after building two conversions - missing a canonical Destroid Phalanx in my Macross mecha collection, and since I had one stashed away (you never know…) I tackled this project now. The kit is Bandai’s re-issue of Imai’s 1982 1:100 kit, a vintage “Matryoshka” construction (= build one element from two halves, place it between two more halves, etc.) which does not make the assembly process easy.

 

The kit was basically built OOB, but “under the hood” it received some mechanical mods and improvements. These primarily include scratched joints for the arms/launcher pods and the hip. The pods remained detachable through an internal styrene tube construction. An important improvement for the “04 chassis” is a completely now hip joint arrangement because the Phalanx’ OOB posture is pretty stiff, with the legs and feet facing straight forward. The mecha model is just supposed to just stand upright and with the model’s OOB joint options it is really hard to create a vivid poise at all, so that a 3rd dimension improves the posing options a lot. Furthermore, the bolts that hold the legs are prone to break off, even more so because the kit is from the 1st generation of mecha kits without vinyl caps and just a very tight joint fit to hold the appendages in place. My solution was the implantation of a new hip “bone”, made from plastic-coated steel wire, which is stiff in itself but can be bent in two dimensions. The thighs had to be modified accordingly, since the wire is much thinner than the original bolts, and it needs a rigid attachment point. Resulting gaps around the hip joints were filled with bits of paper tissue drenched in white glue.

 

Other visual improvements include launch tubes inside of the missile pods. These were made from thin plastic drinking straw material, they fill the (rather ugly and well-visible) blank space between the warheads. Additionally, the hollow “heels” were filled on their insides with putty.

 

While the kit itself is a pretty simple affair, fit is mediocre, and you have to expect PSR almost everywhere. A direly weak spot area is the shank’s rear: there’s a recession with a seam running right through, and there are side walls missing in the section, too. I tried to mend this through putty and decals.

  

Painting and markings:

Since I wanted to stick to the authentic OOB livery, I gave the model an overall basic color, a greenish-grey, dull beige (RAL 1019) from the rattle can. The canonical Phalanx also features some dark contrast highlights all over the hull, and these were created with RAL 7013 (Revell 46), an olive drab tone that looks, in contrast to the light beige, almost like a dull brown on the model. The box art suggests a very dark grey, but I found that this would not work too well with the overall light beige tone.

Strangely, the characteristic white trim on the lower legs that many Destroids carry was in this boxing provided with the decal sheet – other Destroid kits require them to be painted manually!

 

Otherwise there's hardly any other color on the Phalanx’ hull. The missile pod exhausts as well as the launcher interior were painted with steel metallizer (Humbrol 27003) and treated with graphite for a shiny finish, the inside of the launcher covers and the missile tips became bright red (Revell 332). The bellows in the knees became anthracite (Revell 06), later dry-brushed with a reddish brown.

 

Quite a challenge were the three search lights in the “head unit”, because they consist of massive molded opaque styrene. I simulated glass and depth through a bright silver base, with vertical stripes in thinned white and medium grey and a coat with white translucent paint on top of that. Finally, extra artificial light reflexes were added with opaque white paint and, finally, everything was sealed with glossy varnish, which also adds some visual depth.

 

The model was thoroughly weathered with a black-and-brown watercolor washing and a generous dry-brushing treatment with Hemp 168 (RAF Hemp). The decals came next, taken from the OOB sheet, the Bugs Bunny artwork on the lower right leg is a typical individual detail of many Destroids, taken from a WWII USAAF P-47D.

 

After some additional weathering with watercolors and some graphite rubbing around the many edges for a worn and beaten look, the model received an overall coat with acrylic matt varnish. After final assembly of the model’s elements, soot stains were added around the missile launchers’ openings as well as to the small thrusters, again with grinded graphite, and some mineral pigments were dusted onto the model with a soft, big brush, esp. around the lower areas.

  

A build that took some time because of the mediocre fit of the kit and the mechanical mods it IMHO requires. But I am quite happy with the outcome, “just a Destroid” in its gritty heavy ordnance look, and the dull beige suits the Phalanx well.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Heinkel He 70 Blitz (Lightning) was designed in the early 1930s to serve as a mailplane for Deutsche Luft Hansa in response to a request for an aircraft faster than the Lockheed Vega and Orion (as used by Swissair) for use on short routes.

 

It was a low-wing monoplane, with the main characteristic of its design being its elliptical wing (which the Günther brothers had already used for the Bäumer Sausewind sports aircraft before they joined Heinkel) and its small, rounded control surfaces. In order to meet the demanding speed requirements, the design minimized drag with a steamlined cowling, flush rivets, giving a smooth surface finish, and a retractable undercarriage. It was powered by a liquid-cooled BMW VI V12, cooled by ethylene glycol rather than water, allowing a smaller radiator and therefore reducing drag even further. The pilot and radio operator were seated in tandem, with a cabin housing four passengers on two double seats facing each other behind them.

The first prototype flew on 1 December 1932, and proved to have excellent performance, setting eight world records for speed over distance, and reaching a maximum speed of 377 km/h (222 mph) – faster than many contemporary fighter aircraft.

 

Luft Hansa operated He 70s between 1934 and 1937 for a fast flight service, which connected Berlin with Frankfurt, Hamburg and Cologne, as well as on the Cologne/Hamburg route. He 70s were also flown abroad from Stuttgart to Seville between 1934 and 1936. This route was part of the South America mail service provided by Luft Hansa that continued via Bathurst, The Gambia to Natal, Brazil, using Junkers Ju 52/3m and Dornier Wal flying boats. Swissair received a few Heinkel He 70s for express trans-alpine flights between Zurich and Milan in 1934, too.

 

Remaining aircraft were transferred to the Luftwaffe in 1937, and the type saw limited military use during WWII. The Luftwaffe operated He 70s from 1935 onwards, initially as a light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, but as soon as purpose-built designs became available, the He 70 was relegated to liaison and courier aircraft duties.

Twenty-eight He 70s were sent with the Legion Condor and used during the Spanish Civil War as fast reconnaissance aircraft. Their high speed (and likely the already existing "blitz" title) gave them the nickname Rayo (lightning).

 

The He 70K was another fast reconnaissance airplane variant, but it was powered by a WM-K-14 radial engine, a license-built version of the French Gnome-Rhône 14K Mistral Major engine. It was used by the Royal Hungarian Air Force in early World War II during 1941–42 and later re-designated He 170 (since the suffix “K” originally indicated “kommerziell” for a civil export version).

 

Another military customer of the He70K was Sweden, even though in the unique form of a floatplane conversion. Twelve machines, basically of similar configuration to the land-based Hungarian He 70Ks, were delivered in 1937 and operated for reconnaissance and patrol duties along the Baltic coast line under the local designation S 13 (Spaning = Observation). By the end of the hostilities in Europe in 1945, nine S 13 floatplanes were still operational but deemed outdated for military purposes.

 

However, six of the robust machines were still in good shape and earmarked for the new Scandinavian Airlines System (better known as 'SAS'). SAS airline was officially founded on 1 August 1946, when Svensk Interkontinental Lufttrafik AB (an airline owned by the Swedish Wallenberg family), Det Danske Luftfartselskab A/S and Det Norske Luftfartselskap AS (the flag carriers of Denmark and Norway) formed a partnership to handle the intercontinental air traffic of these three Scandinavian countries. Operations started on 17 September 1946, and the revamped He 70 floatplanes (registered in Norway with the codes LN-KMA-F) were to operate in the northern regions of Norway and Sweden for postal and other transport services, extending the Hurtigruten postal ship connections landwards. The other three surviving aircraft were retired, but stored for spares.

 

All military equipment, like the dorsal defensive weapon station, which was simply faired over, was deleted. The civilian crew consisted typically of two (pilot and navigator/Radio operator), but a PostVerket (the Swedish Postal service) official who would assist loading and handle the official paperwork was a frequent third crew member.

 

For easier loading the machines received bigger two-wing freight room doors on both sides of the fuselage, and the original Gnome-Rhône 14K engine with 746 kW (1,000 hp) was replaced by its post-war SNECMA 14R evolution. This supercharged engine considerably improved the aircraft’s take-off performance and overall payload (400kg of goods could be carried now instead of 300kg) and temporarily delivered 1,190 kW (1,590 hp). The cabin had a level floor and featured foldable seats on the side walls for up to six passengers, even though this was only a secondary duty.

 

In 1948 the Swedish flag carrier AB Aerotransport joined SAS and the companies coordinated European operations and finally merged to form the SAS Consortium in 1951. When established, the airline was divided between SAS Danmark (28.6%), SAS Norge (28.6%) and SAS Sverige (42.8%), all owned 50% by private investors and 50% by their governments.

However, the fast technical development in the late Forties and the advent of the jet age rendered the SAS’ He 70 floatplane fleet quickly obsolete and they were retired in 1953.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 2 (pilot, navigator/radio operator) plus up to 6 passengers

Length: 11.70 m (38 ft 4⅔ in)

Wingspan: 14.80 m (48 ft 6⅔.75 in)

Height: 3.10 m (10 ft 2 in)

Wing area: 36.50 m² (392.9 sq ft)

Empty weight: 2,360 kg (5,203 lb)

Loaded weight: 3,386 kg (7,450 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 3,500 kg (7,700 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× SNECMA 14R supercharged 14 cylinder radial engine with 1,190 kW (1,590 hp) for take-off

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 320 km/h (177 knots, 200 mph) at sea level

Cruise speed: 260 km/h (144 knots, 162 mph)

Range: 2,100 km (1,135 nmi, 1,305 mi)

Service ceiling: 5,300 m (17,390 ft)

Climb to 1,000 m (3,300 ft) 3 min

Climb to 4,000 m (13,125 ft): 18 min

  

The kit and its assembly:

A straightforward idea for the “Flying Boat, Seaplane and Amphibian” Group Build at whatifmodelers.com in late 2017. This civilian transport aircraft originally started as a military aircraft (even though this one might materialize later, too). The decision to change the topic fell when I came across a Ju 52/3m sheet (Italeri) in my decal box which features an SAS machine. After some legwork I found that these machines were still in use in the Fifties, and so, why not add a smaller aircraft on floats to the post-WWII SAS fleet for remote regions, e. g. for postal service? The He 70 appeared like a plausible candidate, and from this concept the model evolved.

 

Kit basis is the Matchbox He 70, and the floats come from the KP Letov S.328, a popular donor source since you find this kit quite often and with a small price tag. The floats are still a little ‘petites’ for the He 70, and their "track" is rather narrow. But the combo works, since the He 70 is a very sleek aircraft.

 

The floats’ assembly needed some serious PSR, though, and mounting them to the wobbly struts was challenging in itself. They were outfitted with mooring anchors, new rudders (one OOB piece got lost, they are very fragile and wobbly) and walking planks.

 

The aircraft model is a Revell re-boxing of the Matchbox He 70, and the kit is a PITA. Gone are the days when I thought that a Matchbox kit was simple, but would go together well. Here, nothing really fits, PSR everywhere, this thing SUCKS. Be warned!

 

Since the small windows do not allow much view inside, the interior was kept at a minimum detail level. The original IP side windows were omitted, because they are thick and blurry, and they were later replaced/filled with ClearFix. The cockpit canopy is OOB, but it is so small (and thick, too) that only the pilot's head can be seen – or better: guessed. Since there’s surprisingly little space under the canopy, I could not mount an 1:72 figure and rather used a generic 1:87 (H0 scale) sitting figure.

 

The machine was built with the radial engine option (IMHO a plausible option for the original military operator and also more suitable for operations in the Far North), but the primitive OOB "engine plate" was replaced by a deeper and much better detailed resin piece found in the scrap box (IIRC, left over from a converted ArtModel Polikarpov I-185). It fits snuggly into the OOB front end, even though the ring cover needed some tuning. The propeller is new, too (from a Hobby Boss Fw 190A/F, IIRC), mated with a new axis.

 

In order to adapt the He 70 to the new floats the original landing gear openings were closed (thankfully, the kit comes with dedicated covers) and blended into the lower wing surface with putty. In order to give the floats a good hold to the fuselage, small round adapters (actually rings cut from a 3mm styrene tube) were glued to the lower hull. Not the most elegant solution, but a pragmatic way to bridge some gaps and lay a good foundation.

 

In order to add stability to the aircraft with the additional draggy floats, I mounted a ventral fin under the rear fuselage, under the fin.

 

Another detail: due to the floats, the crew and potential passengers would need boarding ladders, and I used the He 115 as a benchmark. I knew that I have some PE ladders somewhere, but could not find them... So I had to improvise and converted IP window frames from a H0 scale American industrial building into boarding aids. Looks better than most OOB solutions!

 

Towards the finish line, a HO scale pilot figure added to the cockpit (it's tight and the canopy so thick that I could not fit an 1:72 pilot inside!) and the canopy stuck into place with white glue.

  

Painting and markings:

I kept this aspect very simple, and used the livery of a post-WW2 Ju 52/3m as benchmark: uniform silver, but apparently not in NMF – but this could also be corroded aluminum. Or is it a silver paint coat against corrosion? The only contrast were black engine covers, and the airline markings.

 

In order to achieve the silver paint look I tried an experiment: a basic overall coat with acrylic paint from a rattle can, a Duplicolor tone called "Weissaluminium" - which, on the reference sample, rather looks like a greyish paint than a true NMF; at first I was skeptical about the mica particles' size when the paint was still fresh, but once dry the coat looked very good and even, and more like a bare NMF than expected. On top of that, some panel shading with Polished Aluminum Metallizer was added, but only lightly.

 

In order to add some more "color" I decided to paint the underwater parts of the floats in black. Not a good idea – at least with the Tamiya tape I used for a clean demarcation line... Painting went fine, but when I removed the tape wide sections of the alu paint came off with them. Hmpf.

 

Anyway, I will try to use the damage creatively and not sand it off or overpaint the damage with silver - I'll rather use a grey primer, as if some real world damage would have been repaired. After all, it's a kind of bush aircraft.

 

Then the black cowling was added, and I started with the decals, which had to be improvised. For the civil registration code on the wings I used large USAF 45° characters (from a Colorado Decals sheet) – chosing those letters which do not show the typical font, rather simple forms.

 

For the fuselage markings I used leftover material from an 1:144 SAS Caravelle from Mistercraft. These are a little modern for the aircraft’s intended timeframe, but the characteristic blue cheatline with the dragon boat head at the nose was already present on early post-war SAS aircraft, so this detail is more or less O.K., and with the trim in place the aircraft looks very elegant. The “Scandinavian” line also comes from the Caravelle – it should be complemented by “Airlines System” in smaller front, but this was not available, and the line alone was already so big and long that it covers literally the whole cabin.

 

However, the problem with these decals was that the cheatlines featured the triangular Caravelle windows, so that I had to paint them over manually (with Humbrol 104, which is a good match, though). Some more decals, like the country emblems on the fuselage, come from an Italeri SAS Ju 52/3m, or the OOB sheet. The cabin doors were simulated with single 0.5mm decal strips in black.

 

Finally the kit was sealed with semi-matt acrylic varnish (Italeri), the windows were created with Humbrol ClearFix (instead of the OOB styrene pieces) and almost no other weathering was done. In a final step, the floats were mounted under the fuselage and a wire antenna added.

  

Not a spectacular whif, but an elegant one, despite (or thanks to?) the relatively simple civil scheme. The Letov S.328 floats are IMHO a good match in size and volume, but somehow I think the floats’ track with is a little too narrow? Anyway, I stuck with it, and the resulting He 70 floatplane does not look bad at all.

In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle is a carved or formed grotesque[1]: 6–8  with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Architects often used multiple gargoyles on a building to divide the flow of rainwater off the roof to minimize potential damage from rainstorms. A trough is cut in the back of the gargoyle and rainwater typically exits through the open mouth. Gargoyles are usually elongated fantastical animals because their length determines how far water is directed from the wall. When Gothic flying buttresses were used, aqueducts were sometimes cut into the buttress to divert water over the aisle walls.

 

The term gargoyle is most often applied to medieval work, but throughout all ages, some means of water diversion, when not conveyed in gutters, was adopted. In ancient Egyptian architecture, gargoyles showed little variation, typically in the form of a lion's head. Similar lion-mouthed water spouts were also seen on Greek temples, carved or modelled in the marble or terracotta cymatium of the cornice.[14] An excellent example of this are the 39 remaining lion-headed water spouts on the Temple of Zeus. Originally, it had 102 gargoyles or spouts, but due to the heavy weight (they were crafted from marble), many snapped off and had to be replaced.

 

Many medieval cathedrals included gargoyles and chimeras. According to French architect and author Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, himself one of the great producers of gargoyles in the 19th century,[18] the earliest known medieval gargoyles appear on Laon Cathedral (c. 1200–1220). One of the more famous examples is the gargoyles of Notre-Dame de Paris. Although most have grotesque features, the term gargoyle has come to include all types of images. Some gargoyles were depicted as monks, or combinations of real animals and people, many of which were humorous. Unusual animal mixtures, or chimeras, did not act as rainspouts and are more properly called grotesques. They serve as ornamentation but are now popularly called gargoyles.

 

Both ornamented and unornamented waterspouts projecting from roofs at parapet level were a common device used to shed rainwater from buildings until the early 18th century. From that time, more and more buildings used drainpipes to carry the water from the guttering roof to the ground and only very few buildings using gargoyles were constructed. This was because some people found them frightening, and sometimes heavy ones fell off, causing damage. In 1724, the London Building Act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain made the use of downpipes compulsory in all new construction.

 

Langley Moor is an old pit village in County Durham, England. It is located approximately 2 miles south-west of Durham City. Langley Moor is within the civil parish of Brandon and Byshottles which is itself within the City of Durham constituency, as of 2019 represented by Mary Foy MP.

 

The village consists of a large park, three pubs, three schools, a church and an industrial estate.

 

Holliday Park (previously Bents Park, known locally as Boyne Park after Lord Boyne) is located to the north of the village, and was renovated in 2016 with a new children's play area. [1] The park also provides access to the River Browney which runs through it. The park was donated to the public by local alderman and philanthropist Martin Forster Holliday (1848-1935), [2] who was the manager and agent for three North Brancepeth Coal Company collieries (Broompark, Boyne and Littleburn - the latter two being in the village) from 1884 until 1922.

 

The three pubs in the village are The Station, The New Cross (formerly The Langley Moor Hotel, as of 2022 currently closed) and The Lord Boyne Hotel. Historically, the village had two inns, the Littleburn Hotel, two more pubs, two cinemas, a working men's club (now residential flats), a post office, a bank and Salvation Army barracks.

 

The East Coast Main Line, one of Britain's arterial rail links, runs directly through the village over the high street.

 

Langley Moor is also home to two supermarkets, a Tesco Metro (formerly Safeway, Somerfield) and Lidl.

 

The village is located on the A690 approximately 2 miles south-west of Durham and approximately 15 miles south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

 

The Brandon - Bishop Auckland Railway Path is a rail trail stretching nine-miles of scenic woodland which follows the route of the former Durham to Bishop Auckland Line and runs through Langley Moor.

 

There are three schools in Langley Moor, two primary schools and one nursery school:

Langley Moor Nursery School

Langley Moor Primary School (formerly North Brancepeth Council Mixed, Langley Moor Junior Mixed and Infants' School)

St. Patrick's R.C. Primary School

 

The church, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, is located on the border with Meadowfield, which opened on 8th October 1911. The estimated cost of the church was £3,000 (which equals £376,523.30 as of May 2022).

 

Historically, Langley Moor had a methodist church, a Wesleyan church, a baptist church and a United Methodist church.

 

Littleburn Industrial Estate is home to Harrison & Harrison organ builders, who have been involved with organs in cathedrals and churches across the globe.

 

Boyne Colliery opened in approximately 1864 under the ownership of W. Mickle and James Snowball, coal was struck the following year. It was sold to the North Brancepeth Coal Company in the 1880s, under the management of John L. Morland from 1880 until 1884. That same year Martin F. Holliday became agent and manager of the colliery until it closed at some point after 1890.

 

Littleburn Colliery (also known as North Brancepeth Colliery)

Littleburn Colliery opened in approximately 1840, it had a handful of owners including North Brancepeth Coal Company, who bought the colliery in the 1880s. In 1925, at its peak, the pit employed 779 people. The colliery mined coal throughout its operational life. Martin F. Holliday became agent of the colliery in 1909 until his retirement in 1922. Littleburn Colliery closed in December 1950.

 

County Durham, officially simply Durham is a ceremonial county in North East England. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne and Wear to the north, the North Sea to the east, North Yorkshire to the south, and Cumbria to the west. The largest settlement is Darlington, and the county town is the city of Durham.

 

The county has an area of 2,721 km2 (1,051 sq mi) and a population of 866,846. The latter is concentrated in the east; the south-east is part of the Teesside built-up area, which extends into North Yorkshire. After Darlington (92,363), the largest settlements are Hartlepool (88,855), Stockton-on-Tees (82,729), and Durham (48,069). For local government purposes the county comprises three unitary authority areas—County Durham, Darlington, and Hartlepool—and part of a fourth, Stockton-on-Tees. The county historically included the part of Tyne and Wear south of the River Tyne, and excluded the part of County Durham south of the River Tees.

 

The west of the county contains part of the North Pennines uplands, a national landscape. The hills are the source of the rivers Tees and Wear, which flow east and form the valleys of Teesdale and Weardale respectively. The east of the county is flatter, and contains by rolling hills through which the two rivers meander; the Tees forms the boundary with North Yorkshire in its lower reaches, and the Wear exits the county near Chester-le-Street in the north-east. The county's coast is a site of special scientific interest characterised by tall limestone and dolomite cliffs.

 

What is now County Durham was on the border of Roman Britain, and contains survivals of this era at sites such as Binchester Roman Fort. In the Anglo-Saxon period the region was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. In 995 the city of Durham was founded by monks seeking a place safe from Viking raids to house the relics of St Cuthbert. Durham Cathedral was rebuilt after the Norman Conquest, and together with Durham Castle is now a World Heritage Site. By the late Middle Ages the county was governed semi-independently by the bishops of Durham and was also a buffer zone between England and Scotland. County Durham became heavily industrialised in the nineteenth century, when many collieries opened on the Durham coalfield. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, opened in 1825. Most collieries closed during the last quarter of the twentieth century, but the county's coal mining heritage is remembered in the annual Durham Miners' Gala.

 

Remains of Prehistoric Durham include a number of Neolithic earthworks.

 

The Crawley Edge Cairns and Heathery Burn Cave are Bronze Age sites. Maiden Castle, Durham is an Iron Age site.

 

Brigantia, the land of the Brigantes, is said to have included what is now County Durham.

 

There are archaeological remains of Roman Durham. Dere Street and Cade's Road run through what is now County Durham. There were Roman forts at Concangis (Chester-le-Street), Lavatrae (Bowes), Longovicium (Lanchester), Piercebridge (Morbium), Vindomora (Ebchester) and Vinovium (Binchester). (The Roman fort at Arbeia (South Shields) is within the former boundaries of County Durham.) A Romanised farmstead has been excavated at Old Durham.

 

Remains of the Anglo-Saxon period include a number of sculpted stones and sundials, the Legs Cross, the Rey Cross and St Cuthbert's coffin.

 

Around AD 547, an Angle named Ida founded the kingdom of Bernicia after spotting the defensive potential of a large rock at Bamburgh, upon which many a fortification was thenceforth built. Ida was able to forge, hold and consolidate the kingdom; although the native British tried to take back their land, the Angles triumphed and the kingdom endured.

 

In AD 604, Ida's grandson Æthelfrith forcibly merged Bernicia (ruled from Bamburgh) and Deira (ruled from York, which was known as Eforwic at the time) to create the Kingdom of Northumbria. In time, the realm was expanded, primarily through warfare and conquest; at its height, the kingdom stretched from the River Humber (from which the kingdom drew its name) to the Forth. Eventually, factional fighting and the rejuvenated strength of neighbouring kingdoms, most notably Mercia, led to Northumbria's decline. The arrival of the Vikings hastened this decline, and the Scandinavian raiders eventually claimed the Deiran part of the kingdom in AD 867 (which became Jórvík). The land that would become County Durham now sat on the border with the Great Heathen Army, a border which today still (albeit with some adjustments over the years) forms the boundaries between Yorkshire and County Durham.

 

Despite their success south of the river Tees, the Vikings never fully conquered the Bernician part of Northumbria, despite the many raids they had carried out on the kingdom. However, Viking control over the Danelaw, the central belt of Anglo-Saxon territory, resulted in Northumbria becoming isolated from the rest of Anglo-Saxon Britain. Scots invasions in the north pushed the kingdom's northern boundary back to the River Tweed, and the kingdom found itself reduced to a dependent earldom, its boundaries very close to those of modern-day Northumberland and County Durham. The kingdom was annexed into England in AD 954.

 

In AD 995, St Cuthbert's community, who had been transporting Cuthbert's remains around, partly in an attempt to avoid them falling into the hands of Viking raiders, settled at Dunholm (Durham) on a site that was defensively favourable due to the horseshoe-like path of the River Wear. St Cuthbert's remains were placed in a shrine in the White Church, which was originally a wooden structure but was eventually fortified into a stone building.

 

Once the City of Durham had been founded, the Bishops of Durham gradually acquired the lands that would become County Durham. Bishop Aldhun began this process by procuring land in the Tees and Wear valleys, including Norton, Stockton, Escomb and Aucklandshire in 1018. In 1031, King Canute gave Staindrop to the Bishops. This territory continued to expand, and was eventually given the status of a liberty. Under the control of the Bishops of Durham, the land had various names: the "Liberty of Durham", "Liberty of St Cuthbert's Land" "the lands of St Cuthbert between Tyne and Tees" or "the Liberty of Haliwerfolc" (holy Wear folk).

 

The bishops' special jurisdiction rested on claims that King Ecgfrith of Northumbria had granted a substantial territory to St Cuthbert on his election to the see of Lindisfarne in 684. In about 883 a cathedral housing the saint's remains was established at Chester-le-Street and Guthfrith, King of York granted the community of St Cuthbert the area between the Tyne and the Wear, before the community reached its final destination in 995, in Durham.

 

Following the Norman invasion, the administrative machinery of government extended only slowly into northern England. Northumberland's first recorded Sheriff was Gilebert from 1076 until 1080 and a 12th-century record records Durham regarded as within the shire. However the bishops disputed the authority of the sheriff of Northumberland and his officials, despite the second sheriff for example being the reputed slayer of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots. The crown regarded Durham as falling within Northumberland until the late thirteenth century.

 

Following the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror appointed Copsig as Earl of Northumbria, thereby bringing what would become County Durham under Copsig's control. Copsig was, just a few weeks later, killed in Newburn. Having already being previously offended by the appointment of a non-Northumbrian as Bishop of Durham in 1042, the people of the region became increasingly rebellious. In response, in January 1069, William despatched a large Norman army, under the command of Robert de Comines, to Durham City. The army, believed to consist of 700 cavalry (about one-third of the number of Norman knights who had participated in the Battle of Hastings), entered the city, whereupon they were attacked, and defeated, by a Northumbrian assault force. The Northumbrians wiped out the entire Norman army, including Comines, all except for one survivor, who was allowed to take the news of this defeat back.

 

Following the Norman slaughter at the hands of the Northumbrians, resistance to Norman rule spread throughout Northern England, including a similar uprising in York. William The Conqueror subsequently (and successfully) attempted to halt the northern rebellions by unleashing the notorious Harrying of the North (1069–1070). Because William's main focus during the harrying was on Yorkshire, County Durham was largely spared the Harrying.

 

Anglo-Norman Durham refers to the Anglo-Norman period, during which Durham Cathedral was built.

 

Matters regarding the bishopric of Durham came to a head in 1293 when the bishop and his steward failed to attend proceedings of quo warranto held by the justices of Northumberland. The bishop's case went before parliament, where he stated that Durham lay outside the bounds of any English shire and that "from time immemorial it had been widely known that the sheriff of Northumberland was not sheriff of Durham nor entered within that liberty as sheriff. . . nor made there proclamations or attachments". The arguments appear to have prevailed, as by the fourteenth century Durham was accepted as a liberty which received royal mandates direct. In effect it was a private shire, with the bishop appointing his own sheriff. The area eventually became known as the "County Palatine of Durham".

 

Sadberge was a liberty, sometimes referred to as a county, within Northumberland. In 1189 it was purchased for the see but continued with a separate sheriff, coroner and court of pleas. In the 14th century Sadberge was included in Stockton ward and was itself divided into two wards. The division into the four wards of Chester-le-Street, Darlington, Easington and Stockton existed in the 13th century, each ward having its own coroner and a three-weekly court corresponding to the hundred court. The diocese was divided into the archdeaconries of Durham and Northumberland. The former is mentioned in 1072, and in 1291 included the deaneries of Chester-le-Street, Auckland, Lanchester and Darlington.

 

The term palatinus is applied to the bishop in 1293, and from the 13th century onwards the bishops frequently claimed the same rights in their lands as the king enjoyed in his kingdom.

 

The historic boundaries of County Durham included a main body covering the catchment of the Pennines in the west, the River Tees in the south, the North Sea in the east and the Rivers Tyne and Derwent in the north. The county palatinate also had a number of liberties: the Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire exclaves within Northumberland, and the Craikshire exclave within the North Riding of Yorkshire. In 1831 the county covered an area of 679,530 acres (2,750.0 km2) and had a population of 253,910. These exclaves were included as part of the county for parliamentary electoral purposes until 1832, and for judicial and local-government purposes until the coming into force of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844, which merged most remaining exclaves with their surrounding county. The boundaries of the county proper remained in use for administrative and ceremonial purposes until the Local Government Act 1972.

 

Boldon Book (1183 or 1184) is a polyptichum for the Bishopric of Durham.

 

Until the 15th century, the most important administrative officer in the Palatinate was the steward. Other officers included the sheriff, the coroners, the Chamberlain and the chancellor. The palatine exchequer originated in the 12th century. The palatine assembly represented the whole county, and dealt chiefly with fiscal questions. The bishop's council, consisting of the clergy, the sheriff and the barons, regulated judicial affairs, and later produced the Chancery and the courts of Admiralty and Marshalsea.

 

The prior of Durham ranked first among the bishop's barons. He had his own court, and almost exclusive jurisdiction over his men. A UNESCO site describes the role of the Prince-Bishops in Durham, the "buffer state between England and Scotland":

 

From 1075, the Bishop of Durham became a Prince-Bishop, with the right to raise an army, mint his own coins, and levy taxes. As long as he remained loyal to the king of England, he could govern as a virtually autonomous ruler, reaping the revenue from his territory, but also remaining mindful of his role of protecting England’s northern frontier.

 

A report states that the Bishops also had the authority to appoint judges and barons and to offer pardons.

 

There were ten palatinate barons in the 12th century, most importantly the Hyltons of Hylton Castle, the Bulmers of Brancepeth, the Conyers of Sockburne, the Hansards of Evenwood, and the Lumleys of Lumley Castle. The Nevilles owned large estates in the county. John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby rebuilt Raby Castle, their principal seat, in 1377.

 

Edward I's quo warranto proceedings of 1293 showed twelve lords enjoying more or less extensive franchises under the bishop. The repeated efforts of the Crown to check the powers of the palatinate bishops culminated in 1536 in the Act of Resumption, which deprived the bishop of the power to pardon offences against the law or to appoint judicial officers. Moreover, indictments and legal processes were in future to run in the name of the king, and offences to be described as against the peace of the king, rather than that of the bishop. In 1596 restrictions were imposed on the powers of the chancery, and in 1646 the palatinate was formally abolished. It was revived, however, after the Restoration, and continued with much the same power until 5 July 1836, when the Durham (County Palatine) Act 1836 provided that the palatine jurisdiction should in future be vested in the Crown.

 

During the 15th-century Wars of the Roses, Henry VI passed through Durham. On the outbreak of the Great Rebellion in 1642 Durham inclined to support the cause of Parliament, and in 1640 the high sheriff of the palatinate guaranteed to supply the Scottish army with provisions during their stay in the county. In 1642 the Earl of Newcastle formed the western counties into an association for the King's service, but in 1644 the palatinate was again overrun by a Scottish army, and after the Battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644) fell entirely into the hands of Parliament.

 

In 1614, a Bill was introduced in Parliament for securing representation to the county and city of Durham and the borough of Barnard Castle. The bishop strongly opposed the proposal as an infringement of his palatinate rights, and the county was first summoned to return members to Parliament in 1654. After the Restoration of 1660 the county and city returned two members each. In the wake of the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned two members for two divisions, and the boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland acquired representation. The bishops lost their secular powers in 1836. The boroughs of Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool returned one member each from 1868 until the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.

 

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 reformed the municipal boroughs of Durham, Stockton on Tees and Sunderland. In 1875, Jarrow was incorporated as a municipal borough, as was West Hartlepool in 1887. At a county level, the Local Government Act 1888 reorganised local government throughout England and Wales. Most of the county came under control of the newly formed Durham County Council in an area known as an administrative county. Not included were the county boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland. However, for purposes other than local government, the administrative county of Durham and the county boroughs continued to form a single county to which the Crown appointed a Lord Lieutenant of Durham.

 

Over its existence, the administrative county lost territory, both to the existing county boroughs, and because two municipal boroughs became county boroughs: West Hartlepool in 1902 and Darlington in 1915. The county boundary with the North Riding of Yorkshire was adjusted in 1967: that part of the town of Barnard Castle historically in Yorkshire was added to County Durham, while the administrative county ceded the portion of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees in Durham to the North Riding. In 1968, following the recommendation of the Local Government Commission, Billingham was transferred to the County Borough of Teesside, in the North Riding. In 1971, the population of the county—including all associated county boroughs (an area of 2,570 km2 (990 sq mi))—was 1,409,633, with a population outside the county boroughs of 814,396.

 

In 1974, the Local Government Act 1972 abolished the administrative county and the county boroughs, reconstituting County Durham as a non-metropolitan county. The reconstituted County Durham lost territory to the north-east (around Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland) to Tyne and Wear and to the south-east (around Hartlepool) to Cleveland. At the same time it gained the former area of Startforth Rural District from the North Riding of Yorkshire. The area of the Lord Lieutenancy of Durham was also adjusted by the Act to coincide with the non-metropolitan county (which occupied 3,019 km2 (1,166 sq mi) in 1981).

 

In 1996, as part of 1990s UK local government reform by Lieutenancies Act 1997, Cleveland was abolished. Its districts were reconstituted as unitary authorities. Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees (north Tees) were returned to the county for the purposes of Lord Lieutenancy. Darlington also became a third unitary authority of the county. The Royal Mail abandoned the use of postal counties altogether, permitted but not mandatory being at a writer wishes.

 

As part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England initiated by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the seven district councils within the County Council area were abolished. The County Council assumed their functions and became the fourth unitary authority. Changes came into effect on 1 April 2009.

 

On 15 April 2014, North East Combined Authority was established under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 with powers over economic development and regeneration. In November 2018, Newcastle City Council, North Tyneside Borough Council, and Northumberland County Council left the authority. These later formed the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

 

In May 2021, four parish councils of the villages of Elwick, Hart, Dalton Piercy and Greatham all issued individual votes of no confidence in Hartlepool Borough Council, and expressed their desire to join the County Durham district.

 

In October 2021, County Durham was shortlisted for the UK City of Culture 2025. In May 2022, it lost to Bradford.

 

Eighteenth century Durham saw the appearance of dissent in the county and the Durham Ox. The county did not assist the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. The Statue of Neptune in the City of Durham was erected in 1729.

 

A number of disasters happened in Nineteenth century Durham. The Felling mine disasters happened in 1812, 1813, 1821 and 1847. The Philadelphia train accident happened in 1815. In 1854, there was a great fire in Gateshead. One of the West Stanley Pit disasters happened in 1882. The Victoria Hall disaster happened in 1883.

 

One of the West Stanley Pit disasters happened in 1909. The Darlington rail crash happened in 1928. The Battle of Stockton happened in 1933. The Browney rail crash happened in 1946.

 

The First Treaty of Durham was made at Durham in 1136. The Second Treaty of Durham was made at Durham in 1139.

 

The county regiment was the Durham Light Infantry, which replaced, in particular, the 68th (Durham) Regiment of Foot (Light Infantry) and the Militia and Volunteers of County Durham.

 

RAF Greatham, RAF Middleton St George and RAF Usworth were located in County Durham.

 

David I, the King of Scotland, invaded the county in 1136, and ravaged much of the county 1138. In 17 October 1346, the Battle of Neville's Cross was fought at Neville's Cross, near the city of Durham. On 16 December 1914, during the First World War, there was a raid on Hartlepool by the Imperial German Navy.

 

Chroniclers connected with Durham include the Bede, Symeon of Durham, Geoffrey of Coldingham and Robert de Graystanes.

 

County Durham has long been associated with coal mining, from medieval times up to the late 20th century. The Durham Coalfield covered a large area of the county, from Bishop Auckland, to Consett, to the River Tyne and below the North Sea, thereby providing a significant expanse of territory from which this rich mineral resource could be extracted.

 

King Stephen possessed a mine in Durham, which he granted to Bishop Pudsey, and in the same century colliers are mentioned at Coundon, Bishopwearmouth and Sedgefield. Cockfield Fell was one of the earliest Landsale collieries in Durham. Edward III issued an order allowing coal dug at Newcastle to be taken across the Tyne, and Richard II granted to the inhabitants of Durham licence to export the produce of the mines, without paying dues to the corporation of Newcastle. The majority was transported from the Port of Sunderland complex, which was constructed in the 1850s.

 

Among other early industries, lead-mining was carried on in the western part of the county, and mustard was extensively cultivated. Gateshead had a considerable tanning trade and shipbuilding was undertaken at Jarrow, and at Sunderland, which became the largest shipbuilding town in the world – constructing a third of Britain's tonnage.[citation needed]

 

The county's modern-era economic history was facilitated significantly by the growth of the mining industry during the nineteenth century. At the industry's height, in the early 20th century, over 170,000 coal miners were employed, and they mined 58,700,000 tons of coal in 1913 alone. As a result, a large number of colliery villages were built throughout the county as the industrial revolution gathered pace.

 

The railway industry was also a major employer during the industrial revolution, with railways being built throughout the county, such as The Tanfield Railway, The Clarence Railway and The Stockton and Darlington Railway. The growth of this industry occurred alongside the coal industry, as the railways provided a fast, efficient means to move coal from the mines to the ports and provided the fuel for the locomotives. The great railway pioneers Timothy Hackworth, Edward Pease, George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson were all actively involved with developing the railways in tandem with County Durham's coal mining industry. Shildon and Darlington became thriving 'railway towns' and experienced significant growths in population and prosperity; before the railways, just over 100 people lived in Shildon but, by the 1890s, the town was home to around 8,000 people, with Shildon Shops employing almost 3000 people at its height.

 

However, by the 1930s, the coal mining industry began to diminish and, by the mid-twentieth century, the pits were closing at an increasing rate. In 1951, the Durham County Development Plan highlighted a number of colliery villages, such as Blackhouse, as 'Category D' settlements, in which future development would be prohibited, property would be acquired and demolished, and the population moved to new housing, such as that being built in Newton Aycliffe. Likewise, the railway industry also began to decline, and was significantly brought to a fraction of its former self by the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. Darlington Works closed in 1966 and Shildon Shops followed suit in 1984. The county's last deep mines, at Easington, Vane Tempest, Wearmouth and Westoe, closed in 1993.

 

Postal Rates from 1801 were charged depending on the distance from London. Durham was allocated the code 263 the approximate mileage from London. From about 1811, a datestamp appeared on letters showing the date the letter was posted. In 1844 a new system was introduced and Durham was allocated the code 267. This system was replaced in 1840 when the first postage stamps were introduced.

 

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911): "To the Anglo-Saxon period are to be referred portions of the churches of Monk Wearmouth (Sunderland), Jarrow, Escomb near Bishop Auckland, and numerous sculptured crosses, two of which are in situ at Aycliffe. . . . The Decorated and Perpendicular periods are very scantily represented, on account, as is supposed, of the incessant wars between England and Scotland in the 14th and 15th centuries. The principal monastic remains, besides those surrounding Durham cathedral, are those of its subordinate house or "cell," Finchale Priory, beautifully situated by the Wear. The most interesting castles are those of Durham, Raby, Brancepeth and Barnard. There are ruins of castelets or peel-towers at Dalden, Ludworth and Langley Dale. The hospitals of Sherburn, Greatham and Kepyer, founded by early bishops of Durham, retain but few ancient features."

 

The best remains of the Norman period include Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle, and several parish churches, such as St Laurence Church in Pittington. The Early English period has left the eastern portion of the cathedral, the churches of Darlington, Hartlepool, and St Andrew, Auckland, Sedgefield, and portions of a few other churches.

 

'Durham Castle and Cathedral' is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Elsewhere in the County there is Auckland Castle.

©2011 LKG Photography

Trying to minimize the clutter on the desk for a change.

 

Still using my 24" and 20" LG screen that I've added some backlighting to make them a bit easier on the easy in the dark.

 

I really could use a triple 24" set ;)

 

3DConnexion Spacepilot and Logitech Illuminated Keyboard FTW

Yellow Girl may, or may not, be spay when she is recalled. Seeing Eye breeds their own dogs allowing them to carefully control genetics ensuring the dogs will be able to work for a number of years (an average of 8) and minimizing any veterinary costs. It is heartbreaking for any person to have to retire, or return, their guide at anytime but especially at an early age and due to health issues.

 

When the females come into season it is the foster families’ choice to either keep her at home, or she can go to The Seeing Eye for a stay at “girl’s camp”. While at camp, the girls are pre-evaluated and any problems; either medical or social, can be addressed.

 

Today, Yellow Girl returned home from her vacation at camp. Sometimes vacations aren't all that they are cracked up to be. They can be exhausting.

 

submitted to ODC/ topic ~ double

2 napping

   

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

WIKIPEDIA

This portrait of a miner was done underground at the depth of 400 meters in the oldest gold mine in the world - Berezovskaya Shakhta. Miner distracted from his work and delivered to the appointed location. item posing was minimized.

How to Walk In Heels Like A Pro And Minimize The Pain (Male to Female Transgender / Crossdressing Tips)

transgenre.silicone-breast.com/2016/11/26/how-to-walk-in-...

imgur.com/rBL33Dm.jpg?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

 

When Marilyn Monroe said: “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world,” we’re fairly certain she was talking about heels. But if you can’t walk in said heels? Well, that essentially "Transgender" negates any potential conquests, whether you’re in the boardroom or the bar. Accordi

 

A collection of custom minimizes I made to accompany the official DST minimate.

Please view larger to minimize Flickr's compression artifacts.

  

Watch This Video On YouTube Here: youtu.be/Pc0p_o7yAqM

How To Get Hard Fast - Sexual Performance Anxiety

Obtain Your Free Copy of The 3 Deadliest Myths About Erectile Dysfunction Here: bit.ly/Impotence-3DeadlyMythsOfErectileDysfunctionEbook It's hardly a news flash that exercise is very important to your overall health, but what you might not exactly have known is the fact that getting enough exercise is also an important step toward minimizing your ED symptoms. Naturally, don't be prepared to hear such things from the people who are selling you ED pills on a monthly basis. They'd just right see you not do anything to minimize your symptoms so you'll keep buying from them every month, but it's true. By itself, exercise is nearly certain not to be sufficient to totally eliminate ED, but it can help minimize your symptoms absolutely. Why Exercise Improves Your ED? At the core, erectile dysfunction is a circulatory condition. It's about blood flow. Consider it: The facts that causes your penis to be erect? Blood flowing to it. The better your circulation and the more blood that flows into the erectile tissue, the firmer and stronger your erections will be. This explains why some exercises are much better than others at reducing ED symptoms. Specifically, what you would like are cardiovascular exercises. Yes, you want to work up a sweat, but more than that, you want to do an exercise that gets your heart pumping really. People will tell you that the best way to begin is to begin modestly. To invest in, say, fifteen minutes of exercise, three to five times weekly when you're starting out. Then, as time passes, slowly increase your duration, and the number of days per week you're exercising. That's generally pretty good advice, but we want to add an additional wrinkle compared to that. For starters, Keep exercise to three days a week, but yes, build-up the length of time you may spend exercising gradually. In addition to that though, find a sport you love. Maybe it's anything. Kayaking, soccer, fencing, hiking...just make sure it's something you enjoy, and something you're passionate about. If you like to do it, and are passionate about any of it, you'll naturally be inclined to do more of it. This is the reason you don't need to bump up your exercise to more than 3 x per week. You'll be supplementing that with your brand-new sports activity. Think about this to be your "sweat equity." This is the equity you placed into living a longer, healthier life. In trade with the sweat equity, you'll get a wholesome heart and lungs, better circulation, more energy, more stamina, of course, if you have ED, you'll notice a marked decrease in your symptoms. If you don't have ED, a good exercise program won't guarantee that you'll never experience difficulties, but if so when you do, they will be much milder than they otherwise could have been. You will discover relatively few people beyond "gym rats" who wish to exercise, so consider it as an investment. That's why we used the word "sweat equity." We wish you to think of it in exactly the same conditions as financial investments you make in your own future. If you can put yourself for the reason that mindset, in case you supplement your regular physical exercise with a sport you love, you'll be more likely to stick with it, and consistency is key. Exercise, and its own overall effectiveness is only as good as your commitment to it. The only kind of exercise that is included with a caveat is bicycling. There is no doubt that it is a terrific way to get (and stay) in shape, but they have one small drawback. Studies have shown that spending a lot of time cycling can result in an increased probability of problems with your prostate gland. Additionally, it may, in at least some cases, cause numbness around the penis, which while not quite exactly like ED, will surely reduce the quality of your erections. In addition to cardio-based exercises and a regular workout routine, don't overlook the importance of stretching. You can do something like Tai Yoga or Chi, for example. Both these are excellent ways to stretch and tone the muscles, and make an outstanding addition to your overall fitness routine. The best thing about Yoga is that it's a wonderful, meditative technique, not only is it a great way to stretch. Start simply and modestly, and slowly work the right path into more advanced postures. The bottom line is simple: Exercise is not only good for your overall health, it is also best for your sexual health. If you are genuinely enthusiastic about maintaining an active sex life well past your forties, when men begin experiencing sexual difficulties typically, then you're going to want to make regular physical exercise an important part of your daily routine. Again, the most important thing here's to make certain you pick a sport that you're genuinely passionate about, because that makes it easy to stick with it. Subscribe to my channel here: youtube.com/c/BretmcopelandBlogspot

via Men's Health Channel

Hyrax minimizes exposure to predators by visiting grasslands as a group and eating quickly for only an hour each morning and afternoon.

My natural curls. Someone asked me recently on here if my hair is naturally curly. It is. For the past four years or so I have used Curlformers to minimize frizz, but if I let it air dry without them this is what I get. Untamed curls - as each hair is trying to form its own ringlet instead of sticking together with its neighbors to form larger, less frizzy ringlets.

 

I have a little Eva NYC Hungry Hair Oil Treatment and Rock-A-Wave Curl Cream on it, for those who are curious if I use styling products. I only ever use conditioners.

For Hummers I prefer perching locations with sufficient distance from the feeders to minimize the reflected red glow on the birds. I typically place natural slender tree branches a distance above the feeders. With time, the feeding birds get used to my presence and allow for close shots like this. They often land above the feeders for a last look around. This setting is above my eye level. If I can position myself with the sun at my back, I also have a good chance of showing the splendid red gorget iridescence.

 

IMG_2441; Broad-tailed Hummingbird

The Red Admiral is one of the few species of butterfly to overwinter in Britain as an adult. I've been mugging up on why I am still seeing an occasional Red Admiral even after some very cold days.

 

Apparently species like Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Brimstone and Comma lie "dormant". Technically this is not "hibernation" as that involves a slow down in both breathing and heart rates, plus the body temperature would also be lowered. Meanwhile, WikiWhoKnowsAlmost Everything, describes "dormancy" as a period when growth, development, and most physical activity are temporarily stopped. This minimizes metabolic activity and therefore helps conserve energy.

 

However, according to Butterfly Conservation, the Red Admiral doesn’t even become properly "dormant" as it becomes active on any warmer and sunnier days. So this explains why I am still occasionally seeing this particular species but no other butterfly!

One of the amazingly colourful Marine Iguanas from Suarez Point on Espanola.

 

Marine Iguana

The Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) is an iguana found only on the Galapagos Islands that has the ability, unique among modern lizards, to live and forage in the sea. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago, and is sometimes called the Galapagos Marine Iguana. It mainly lives on the rocky Galapagos shore, but can also be spotted in marshes and mangrove beaches. On his visit to the islands, Charles Darwin was revolted by the animals' appearance, writing “The black Lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft), disgusting clumsy Lizards. They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey from the Sea. I call them 'imps of darkness'. They assuredly well become the land they inhabit.” In fact, Amblyrhynchus cristatus is not always black; the young have a lighter coloured dorsal stripe, and some adult specimens are grey. The reason for the sombre tones is that the species must rapidly absorb heat to minimize the period of lethargy after emerging from the water. They feed almost exclusively on marine algae, expelling the excess salt from nasal glands while basking in the sun, and the coating of salt can make their faces appear white. In adult males, coloration varies with the season. Breeding-season adult males on the southern islands are the most colorful and will acquire reddish and teal-green colors, while on Santa Cruz they are brick red and black, and on Fernandina they are brick red and dull greenish. Another difference between the iguanas is size, which is different depending on the island the individual iguana inhabits. The iguanas living on the islands of Fernandina and Isabela (named for the famous rulers of Spain) are the largest found anywhere in the Galápagos. On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest iguanas are found on the island on Genovesa. Adult males are approximately 1.3 m long, females 0.6 m, males weigh up to 1.5 kg. On land, the marine iguana is rather a clumsy animal, but in the water it is a graceful swimmer, using its powerful tail to propel itself. As an exothermic animal, the marine iguana can spend only a limited time in the cold sea, where it dives for algae. However, by swimming only in the shallow waters around the island they are able to survive single dives of up to half an hour at depths of more than 15 m. After these dives, they return to their territory to bask in the sun and warm up again. When cold, the iguana is unable to move effectively, making them vulnerable to predation, so they become highly aggressive before heating up (since they are unable to run away they try to bite attackers in this state). During the breeding season, males become highly territorial. The males assemble large groups of females to mate with, and guard them against other male iguanas. However, at other times the species is only aggressive when cold. Marine iguanas have also been found to change their size to adapt to varying food conditions. During El Niño conditions when the algae that the iguanas feed on was scarce for a period of two years, some were found to decrease their length by as much as 20%. When food conditions returned to normal, the iguanas returned to their pre-famine size. It is speculated that the bones of the iguanas actually shorten as a shrinkage of connective tissue could only account for a 10% length change. Researchers theorize that land and marine iguanas evolved from a common ancestor since arriving on the islands from South America, presumably by driftwood. It is thought that the ancestral species inhabited a part of the volcanic archipelago that is now submerged. A second school of thought holds that the Marine iguana may have evolved from a now extinct family of seagoing reptiles. Its generic name, Amblyrhynchus, is a combination of two Greek words, Ambly- from Amblus meaning "blunt" and rhynchus meaning "snout". Its specific name is the Latin word cristatus meaning "crested," and refers to the low crest of spines along the animal's back. Amblyrhynchus is a monotypic genus in that Amblyrhynchus cristatus is the only species which belongs to it at this point in time. This species is completely protected under the laws of Ecuador. El Niño effects cause periodic declines in population, with high mortality, and the marine iguana is threatened by predation by exotic species. The total population size is unknown, but is, according to IUCN, at least 50,000, and estimates from the Charles Darwin Research Station are in the hundreds of thousands. The marine iguanas have not evolved to combat newer predators. Therefore, cats and dogs eat both the young iguanas and dogs will kill adults due to the iguanas' slow reflex times and tameness. Dogs are especially common around human settlements and can cause tremendous predation. Cats are also common in towns, but they also occur in numbers in remote areas where they take a toll on iguanas.

 

Espanola (Suarez Point)

Approximately a 10-12 hour trip from Santa Cruz, Española is the oldest and the southernmost island in the chain. The trip across open waters can be quite rough especially during August and September. Española's remote location helped make it a unique jewel with a large number of endemic creatures. Secluded from the other islands, wildlife on Española adapted to the island's environment and natural resources. The subspecies of Marine iguana from Española are the only ones that change color during breeding season. Normally, marine iguanas are black in color, a camouflage, making it difficult for predators to differentiate between the iguanas and the black lava rocks where they live. On Española adult marine iguanas are brightly colored with a reddish tint except during mating season when their color changes to more of a greenish shade. The Hood Mockingbird is also endemic to the island. These brazen birds have no fear of man and frequently land on visitors heads and shoulders searching for food. The Hood Mockingbird is slightly larger than other mockingbirds found in the Galapagos; its beak is longer and has a more curved shape. The Hood Mockingbird is the only carnivorous one of the species feeding on a variety of insects, turtle hatchlings and sea lion placentas. Wildlife is the highlight of Española and the star of the show is the waved albatross. The island's steep cliffs serve as the perfect runways for these large birds which take off for their ocean feeding grounds near the mainland of Ecuador and Peru abandoning the island between January and March. Known as endemic to the island, Española is the waved albatross's only nesting place. Each April the males return to Española followed shortly thereafter by the females. Mating for life, their ritual begins with the male's annual dance to re-attract his mate. The performance can take up to 5 days consisting of a series of strutting, honking, and beak fencing. Once the pair is reacquainted they produce a single egg and share the responsibility of incubation. The colony remains based on Española until December when the chick is fully grown. By January most of the colony leaves the island to fish along the Humboldt Current. Young albatross do not return to Española until their 4th or 5th year when they return to seek a mate. Geographically Española is a classic example of a shield volcano, created from a single caldera in the center of the island. Over the years as the island has moved further away from the hot spot, the volcano became extinct and erosion began to occur. Española's two visitor sites offer an exceptional island visit. Punta Suarez is one of the highlights of the Galapagos Islands. The variety and quantity of wildlife assures a memorable visit. Visitors find migrant, resident, and endemic wildlife including brightly colored Marine Iguanas, Española Lava Lizards, Hood Mockingbirds, Swallow Tailed Gulls, Blue Footed and Masked Boobies, Galapagos Hawks, a selection of Finch, and the Waved Albatross.Found on the western tip of Española, Punta Suarez offers great wildlife such as sea lions, sea birds and the largest marine iguanas of Galapagos. This is one of the best sites in the Galapagos. The amount of wildlife is overwhelming. Along the beach there are many sea lions and large, colorful lava lizards and marine iguanas. As you follow the trail to the cliff's edge masked boobies can be found nesting among the rock formations. After a short walk down to a beach and back up the other side blue-footed boobies are seen nesting just off the trail. The Galapagos Dove and very friendly Hood Mockingbird are commonly found in this area. The nearby bushes are frequently home to the large-cactus finch, warbler finch, small-ground finch and large-billed flycatcher. Continuing down the trail you come to the only place where waved albatross nest in the islands. Some 12,000 pairs nest on Española each year. The feeling is very dramatic and it seems like a desolate wilderness as the waves crash on the jagged cliffs below and the blowhole shoots water 50-70 feet/15-30 meters into the air. The sky above is full of sea birds including red-billed tropicbirds, American Oystercatchers, swallow-tailed gulls, and Audubon's Shearwaters.

 

Galapagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, some 900 km west of Ecuador. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature. Because of the only very recent arrival of man the majority of the wildlife has no fear of humans and will allow visitors to walk right up them, often having to step over Iguanas or Sea Lions.The Galápagos islands and its surrounding waters are part of a province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of around 40,000, which is a 40-fold expansion in 50 years. The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

My "daughter" Jane, sleeping, and realizing by the way the perfect body surface / volume / space optimization / minimization !

The de-icing platform on the right sums up a typical winter morning in Canberra. Frost and fog are two weather staples at this time of the year, and to minimize the chance of having your travel plans disrupted by the fog, it is a good idea to get one of the first flights out. These are serviced by aircraft that arrived late the previous evening, and hence you will not have to wait for the fog to lift allowing aircraft to land from out of town.

 

Fog was not a major problem this morning, and the Qantas fleet was stirring into life. This photo was taken as I walked along the aero-bridge to the 737-800 VH-VXJ "Coober Pedy" (on the left) for the short flight to Melbourne en route to Perth. Meanwhile, another Qantas 737-800 (VH-XZK) was already taxiing towards the main runway for takeoff.

 

Qantas 737-800 (background) VH-XZK

www.theqantassource.com/vh-xzk.html

 

Qantas 737-800 VH-VXJ "Coober Pedy"

www.theqantassource.com/vh-vxj.html

 

Canberra Airport (CBR), ACT, Australia.

 

iPhone 5s - Photograph taken with the camera on an iPhone 5s.

Camera - The native camera app was used without the HDR option to capture the image.

Handy Photo - Retouched the worst of the reflections from the window glass that was in front of me.

Snapseed - Overall lighting adjustments carried out. Image cropped, retaining the original 4:3 aspect ratio.

Big Photo - Image re-sized to 3264 x 2448 pixels.

Photoshop Express - Applied the Sharpening and Noise Reduction filters. Applied overall lighting adjustments.

Pixlr Express Plus - Applied portions of the "center" and "small" dark vignettes.

ExifEditor - EXIF data from the original photograph transferred to the final image.

 

(Filed as 201409??_iPadMiniRetina ??? HandyPhoto-Snapseed-BigPhoto-PhotoshopExpress-PixlrExpressPlus-ExifEditor.JPG)

Clearly now, infection curve has reversed course and rapidly rising. In some town, hospitals have reached full capacity. Shockingly unprecedented! And victims are in 18-40 group, which is expected by health experts. Sadly dangerous!

 

Not until painfully pinned down to bed one would understand the impact of this lethal crisis. I neither yet experience that thankfully but rather choosing not to blindly let that get to me.

 

But T was so irresponsible and leaderless with pushing for early business reopening while encouraging public to care free about facial masking and dangerously loosening up of social distancing (nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/trump-staff-removed-socia...). Of course, recent protests with quite many not wearing masks contribute to the rise too. As well, beach and party gatherings.

 

My sincere hope is the low fatality rate as these victims still having prime immune system and less likely yet suffering any underlining chronic illness. But federal gov't starting from the nut head top and sinful sec of education are insisting students going back to school after summer, while planning to kick out foreign students, perhaps as a hidden means of revenge for EU closing doors on US citizens due to rising infection in America, and screening out Asian students mostly CNese because of ... well racism and blaming. And that not only making parents everywhere on edge but worrying teachers and school staffs also. Horribly deceitful! The task of reopening school should be better assessed and determined by individual state as constitutionally ruled.

  

But I suspect pushing for school reopening is part of a grand scheme calculated and set in place to minimize any further large protesting by youths in the fall which will directly affect the presidential election. Evidently, his only-go-to Fox News admitted T is on verge of sizable defeat based on many recent national polling if continued that way til the voting day.

 

I just wish the safety for kids and school educators/staffs. The digital schooling has been established and should continue as long as necessary, so that hospitals won't be overwhelmed and for vaccines to catch up in time before the grand population in submerge of brutal sickness.

One of the amazingly colourful Marine Iguanas from Suarez Point on Espanola

 

Marine Iguana

The Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) is an iguana found only on the Galapagos Islands that has the ability, unique among modern lizards, to live and forage in the sea. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago, and is sometimes called the Galapagos Marine Iguana. It mainly lives on the rocky Galapagos shore, but can also be spotted in marshes and mangrove beaches. On his visit to the islands, Charles Darwin was revolted by the animals' appearance, writing “The black Lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft), disgusting clumsy Lizards. They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey from the Sea. I call them 'imps of darkness'. They assuredly well become the land they inhabit.” In fact, Amblyrhynchus cristatus is not always black; the young have a lighter coloured dorsal stripe, and some adult specimens are grey. The reason for the sombre tones is that the species must rapidly absorb heat to minimize the period of lethargy after emerging from the water. They feed almost exclusively on marine algae, expelling the excess salt from nasal glands while basking in the sun, and the coating of salt can make their faces appear white. In adult males, coloration varies with the season. Breeding-season adult males on the southern islands are the most colorful and will acquire reddish and teal-green colors, while on Santa Cruz they are brick red and black, and on Fernandina they are brick red and dull greenish. Another difference between the iguanas is size, which is different depending on the island the individual iguana inhabits. The iguanas living on the islands of Fernandina and Isabela (named for the famous rulers of Spain) are the largest found anywhere in the Galápagos. On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest iguanas are found on the island on Genovesa. Adult males are approximately 1.3 m long, females 0.6 m, males weigh up to 1.5 kg. On land, the marine iguana is rather a clumsy animal, but in the water it is a graceful swimmer, using its powerful tail to propel itself. As an exothermic animal, the marine iguana can spend only a limited time in the cold sea, where it dives for algae. However, by swimming only in the shallow waters around the island they are able to survive single dives of up to half an hour at depths of more than 15 m. After these dives, they return to their territory to bask in the sun and warm up again. When cold, the iguana is unable to move effectively, making them vulnerable to predation, so they become highly aggressive before heating up (since they are unable to run away they try to bite attackers in this state). During the breeding season, males become highly territorial. The males assemble large groups of females to mate with, and guard them against other male iguanas. However, at other times the species is only aggressive when cold. Marine iguanas have also been found to change their size to adapt to varying food conditions. During El Niño conditions when the algae that the iguanas feed on was scarce for a period of two years, some were found to decrease their length by as much as 20%. When food conditions returned to normal, the iguanas returned to their pre-famine size. It is speculated that the bones of the iguanas actually shorten as a shrinkage of connective tissue could only account for a 10% length change. Researchers theorize that land and marine iguanas evolved from a common ancestor since arriving on the islands from South America, presumably by driftwood. It is thought that the ancestral species inhabited a part of the volcanic archipelago that is now submerged. A second school of thought holds that the Marine iguana may have evolved from a now extinct family of seagoing reptiles. Its generic name, Amblyrhynchus, is a combination of two Greek words, Ambly- from Amblus meaning "blunt" and rhynchus meaning "snout". Its specific name is the Latin word cristatus meaning "crested," and refers to the low crest of spines along the animal's back. Amblyrhynchus is a monotypic genus in that Amblyrhynchus cristatus is the only species which belongs to it at this point in time. This species is completely protected under the laws of Ecuador. El Niño effects cause periodic declines in population, with high mortality, and the marine iguana is threatened by predation by exotic species. The total population size is unknown, but is, according to IUCN, at least 50,000, and estimates from the Charles Darwin Research Station are in the hundreds of thousands. The marine iguanas have not evolved to combat newer predators. Therefore, cats and dogs eat both the young iguanas and dogs will kill adults due to the iguanas' slow reflex times and tameness. Dogs are especially common around human settlements and can cause tremendous predation. Cats are also common in towns, but they also occur in numbers in remote areas where they take a toll on iguanas.

 

Espanola (Suarez Point)

Approximately a 10-12 hour trip from Santa Cruz, Española is the oldest and the southernmost island in the chain. The trip across open waters can be quite rough especially during August and September. Española's remote location helped make it a unique jewel with a large number of endemic creatures. Secluded from the other islands, wildlife on Española adapted to the island's environment and natural resources. The subspecies of Marine iguana from Española are the only ones that change color during breeding season. Normally, marine iguanas are black in color, a camouflage, making it difficult for predators to differentiate between the iguanas and the black lava rocks where they live. On Española adult marine iguanas are brightly colored with a reddish tint except during mating season when their color changes to more of a greenish shade. The Hood Mockingbird is also endemic to the island. These brazen birds have no fear of man and frequently land on visitors heads and shoulders searching for food. The Hood Mockingbird is slightly larger than other mockingbirds found in the Galapagos; its beak is longer and has a more curved shape. The Hood Mockingbird is the only carnivorous one of the species feeding on a variety of insects, turtle hatchlings and sea lion placentas. Wildlife is the highlight of Española and the star of the show is the waved albatross. The island's steep cliffs serve as the perfect runways for these large birds which take off for their ocean feeding grounds near the mainland of Ecuador and Peru abandoning the island between January and March. Known as endemic to the island, Española is the waved albatross's only nesting place. Each April the males return to Española followed shortly thereafter by the females. Mating for life, their ritual begins with the male's annual dance to re-attract his mate. The performance can take up to 5 days consisting of a series of strutting, honking, and beak fencing. Once the pair is reacquainted they produce a single egg and share the responsibility of incubation. The colony remains based on Española until December when the chick is fully grown. By January most of the colony leaves the island to fish along the Humboldt Current. Young albatross do not return to Española until their 4th or 5th year when they return to seek a mate. Geographically Española is a classic example of a shield volcano, created from a single caldera in the center of the island. Over the years as the island has moved further away from the hot spot, the volcano became extinct and erosion began to occur. Española's two visitor sites offer an exceptional island visit. Punta Suarez is one of the highlights of the Galapagos Islands. The variety and quantity of wildlife assures a memorable visit. Visitors find migrant, resident, and endemic wildlife including brightly colored Marine Iguanas, Española Lava Lizards, Hood Mockingbirds, Swallow Tailed Gulls, Blue Footed and Masked Boobies, Galapagos Hawks, a selection of Finch, and the Waved Albatross.Found on the western tip of Española, Punta Suarez offers great wildlife such as sea lions, sea birds and the largest marine iguanas of Galapagos. This is one of the best sites in the Galapagos. The amount of wildlife is overwhelming. Along the beach there are many sea lions and large, colorful lava lizards and marine iguanas. As you follow the trail to the cliff's edge masked boobies can be found nesting among the rock formations. After a short walk down to a beach and back up the other side blue-footed boobies are seen nesting just off the trail. The Galapagos Dove and very friendly Hood Mockingbird are commonly found in this area. The nearby bushes are frequently home to the large-cactus finch, warbler finch, small-ground finch and large-billed flycatcher. Continuing down the trail you come to the only place where waved albatross nest in the islands. Some 12,000 pairs nest on Española each year. The feeling is very dramatic and it seems like a desolate wilderness as the waves crash on the jagged cliffs below and the blowhole shoots water 50-70 feet/15-30 meters into the air. The sky above is full of sea birds including red-billed tropicbirds, American Oystercatchers, swallow-tailed gulls, and Audubon's Shearwaters.

 

Galapagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, some 900 km west of Ecuador. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature. Because of the only very recent arrival of man the majority of the wildlife has no fear of humans and will allow visitors to walk right up them, often having to step over Iguanas or Sea Lions.The Galápagos islands and its surrounding waters are part of a province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of around 40,000, which is a 40-fold expansion in 50 years. The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Update April 2014 - I hear tha the poppies are blooming in Antelope Valley, and conditiosn look very similar to this photo from 2011.

 

Captured at 1/100th second at f/11, ISO 200 on a canon 40D and 60mm lens (96mm equivalent) with fill flash. Basically I treated this like a portrait of the poppy, and used fill flash for this shot to minimize shadows.

  

Watch This Video On YouTube Here: youtu.be/lVOutIbVlYA

How To Get Erect And Stay Erect - What Is An Erection?

Grab Your Free Copy of The 3 Deadliest Myths About Erectile Dysfunction Here: bit.ly/Impotence-3DeadlyMythsOfErectileDysfunctionEbook It's hardly a news flash that exercise is important for your current health, but what you might not exactly have known is the fact getting enough exercise is also an important step toward minimizing your ED symptoms. Of course, don't be prepared to hear might be found from the people who are selling you ED pills on a monthly basis. They'd just as soon see you not do anything to reduce your symptoms so you'll keep buying from them on a monthly basis, but it's true. By itself, exercise is nearly certain not to be sufficient to get rid of ED totally, but it can absolutely help minimize your symptoms. Why Exercise Improves Your ED? At the core, erectile dysfunction is a circulatory condition. It's about blood flow. Think about it: The facts that causes your penis to become erect? Blood flowing to it. The better your circulation and a lot more blood that flows into your erectile tissue, the firmer and better your erections shall be. This explains why some exercises are much better than others at reducing ED symptoms. Specifically, what you would like are cardiovascular exercises. Yes, you want to work up a sweat, but more than that, you should do an exercise that really gets your heart pumping. People shall tell you that the best way to begin is to start modestly. To commit to, say, quarter-hour of exercise, three to five times weekly when you're starting out. Then, as time passes, increase your duration slowly, and the number of days per week you're exercising. That's generally very good advice, but we want to add yet another wrinkle to that. For starters, KEEP your exercise to three days a full week, but yes, gradually build up the amount of time you may spend exercising. Moreover though, find a sport you enjoy. It could be anything. Kayaking, soccer, fencing, hiking...just make sure it's something you love, and something you're interested in. If you like to do it, and are passionate about it, you'll naturally be inclined to do more of it. This is why you don't have to bump up your exercise to more than three times per week. You'll be supplementing that with your brand-new sports activity. Think about this to be your "sweat equity." This is the equity you placed into living a longer, healthier life. In exchange for the sweat equity, you'll get a healthier heart and lungs, better circulation, more energy, more stamina, and when you have ED, you'll notice a marked decrease in your symptoms. If you don't have ED, a good exercise program won't guarantee that you will never experience difficulties, but if so when you do, they will be much milder than they otherwise would have been. You will discover relatively few people beyond "gym rats" who want to exercise, so consider it as an investment. That is why we used the word "sweat equity." We wish you to think about it in exactly the same conditions as financial investments you make in your own future. If you can put yourself for the reason that mindset, and if you supplement your regular physical exercise with a sport you love, you'll be more likely to stick with it, and consistency is key. Exercise, and its overall effectiveness is only as effective as your commitment to it. The one kind of exercise that comes with a caveat is bicycling. There is no doubt that it is a terrific way to get (and stay) in form, but it includes one small drawback. Studies have shown that spending a lot of time cycling can result in an increased probability of problems with your prostate gland. It can also, in at least some cases, cause numbness around the penis, which without quite the same as ED, will surely reduce the quality of your erections. Furthermore to cardio-based exercises and a normal workout routine, don't overlook the value of stretching. You are able to do something like Tai Chi or Yoga, for example. Both of these are great ways to stretch and tone muscle tissue, and make an excellent addition to your overall fitness routine. The great thing about Yoga is that it is a wonderful, meditative technique, in addition to being a great way to stretch. Start and modestly simply, and work your way into more advanced postures slowly. The end result is simple: Exercise is not only good for your overall health, it's also good for your sexual health. If you are genuinely enthusiastic about maintaining an active sex life well past your forties, when men commence experiencing sexual difficulties typically, then you are going to want to make regular physical exercise an important part of your daily routine. Again, the main thing here is to be certain you pick a sport that you're genuinely interested in, because that means it is easy to stay with it. Subscribe to my channel here: youtube.com/c/BretmcopelandBlogspot

via Men's Health Channel

Sculpture by Juan Sajid Imao

Unveiled on February 05, 2004

The 40 Foot Brass statue of Lapu-Lapu is gift from Korea Freedom League to the Filipino people.

Standing Guard means Tikas Pahinga

The sword he is holding is called Kampilan.

The Filipino shield is called "Kalasag"

The head piece is called "Putong", a piece of cloth tied around the forehead. Colored red are only worn by Raja / Datu and Warriors who made a kill in the battle.

The colorful embroidered "Putong" are only worn by Datu or Raja.

The Statue of the Sentinel of Freedom walking distance behind Rizal Monument

Brain child project of former Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon

Kwon Jung-dal is the Chairman of Korean Freedom League.

Kwon Jung-dal is a retired Army General

Lapu-Lapu head relief was featured on a obverse side of 1 Centavo Coins of the Philippines that no longer circulated.

No written record for the cause of death of Lapu-lapu

April 27 is Adlaw ni Lapu-Lapu or Philippine National Day of Lapu-Lapu

The wife of Lapu-Lapu is Pricesa Bulaklak (Princcesa Bulakna or Princesa Juana ) daughter of Datu Sabtano

During the Magellan attack on Mactan Island Lapu-Lapu strategically made the center formation the weakest and the two outer wing the strongest.

Lap-Lapu hit Magellan on the leg in the Battle of Mactan.

  

Photo by ROMMEL T. BANGIT, All rights reserved.

  

[ ROMMEL T. BANGIT ] I want to see the world countries like Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire) Congo, Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea nEritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe (French) Guam (USA) Guatemala Guinea Guinea Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast (Cote D`Ivoire) Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique (French) Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia (French) New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Korea Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Island Poland Polynesia French) Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste (East Timor) Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Virgin Islands Wallis and Futuna Islands Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe to my Front yard.

 

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Two of the amazingly colourful Marine Iguanas from Suarez Point on Espanola with a Blue Footed Booby in the background.

 

Marine Iguana

The Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) is an iguana found only on the Galapagos Islands that has the ability, unique among modern lizards, to live and forage in the sea. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago, and is sometimes called the Galapagos Marine Iguana. It mainly lives on the rocky Galapagos shore, but can also be spotted in marshes and mangrove beaches. On his visit to the islands, Charles Darwin was revolted by the animals' appearance, writing “The black Lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft), disgusting clumsy Lizards. They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey from the Sea. I call them 'imps of darkness'. They assuredly well become the land they inhabit.” In fact, Amblyrhynchus cristatus is not always black; the young have a lighter coloured dorsal stripe, and some adult specimens are grey. The reason for the sombre tones is that the species must rapidly absorb heat to minimize the period of lethargy after emerging from the water. They feed almost exclusively on marine algae, expelling the excess salt from nasal glands while basking in the sun, and the coating of salt can make their faces appear white. In adult males, coloration varies with the season. Breeding-season adult males on the southern islands are the most colorful and will acquire reddish and teal-green colors, while on Santa Cruz they are brick red and black, and on Fernandina they are brick red and dull greenish. Another difference between the iguanas is size, which is different depending on the island the individual iguana inhabits. The iguanas living on the islands of Fernandina and Isabela (named for the famous rulers of Spain) are the largest found anywhere in the Galápagos. On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest iguanas are found on the island on Genovesa. Adult males are approximately 1.3 m long, females 0.6 m, males weigh up to 1.5 kg. On land, the marine iguana is rather a clumsy animal, but in the water it is a graceful swimmer, using its powerful tail to propel itself. As an exothermic animal, the marine iguana can spend only a limited time in the cold sea, where it dives for algae. However, by swimming only in the shallow waters around the island they are able to survive single dives of up to half an hour at depths of more than 15 m. After these dives, they return to their territory to bask in the sun and warm up again. When cold, the iguana is unable to move effectively, making them vulnerable to predation, so they become highly aggressive before heating up (since they are unable to run away they try to bite attackers in this state). During the breeding season, males become highly territorial. The males assemble large groups of females to mate with, and guard them against other male iguanas. However, at other times the species is only aggressive when cold. Marine iguanas have also been found to change their size to adapt to varying food conditions. During El Niño conditions when the algae that the iguanas feed on was scarce for a period of two years, some were found to decrease their length by as much as 20%. When food conditions returned to normal, the iguanas returned to their pre-famine size. It is speculated that the bones of the iguanas actually shorten as a shrinkage of connective tissue could only account for a 10% length change. Researchers theorize that land and marine iguanas evolved from a common ancestor since arriving on the islands from South America, presumably by driftwood. It is thought that the ancestral species inhabited a part of the volcanic archipelago that is now submerged. A second school of thought holds that the Marine iguana may have evolved from a now extinct family of seagoing reptiles. Its generic name, Amblyrhynchus, is a combination of two Greek words, Ambly- from Amblus meaning "blunt" and rhynchus meaning "snout". Its specific name is the Latin word cristatus meaning "crested," and refers to the low crest of spines along the animal's back. Amblyrhynchus is a monotypic genus in that Amblyrhynchus cristatus is the only species which belongs to it at this point in time. This species is completely protected under the laws of Ecuador. El Niño effects cause periodic declines in population, with high mortality, and the marine iguana is threatened by predation by exotic species. The total population size is unknown, but is, according to IUCN, at least 50,000, and estimates from the Charles Darwin Research Station are in the hundreds of thousands. The marine iguanas have not evolved to combat newer predators. Therefore, cats and dogs eat both the young iguanas and dogs will kill adults due to the iguanas' slow reflex times and tameness. Dogs are especially common around human settlements and can cause tremendous predation. Cats are also common in towns, but they also occur in numbers in remote areas where they take a toll on iguanas.

 

Blue Footed Booby

The natural breeding habitat of the Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii) is tropical and subtropical islands off the Pacific Ocean, most famously, the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. The name “booby” comes from the Spanish term bobo, which means "Stupid" or "Fool"/"Clown". This is because the Blue-footed Booby is clumsy on the land. Like other seabirds, they can be very tame. The Blue-footed Booby is on average 81 cm (32”) long and weighs 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb), with the females slightly larger than the males. It has long pointed wings and a wedge shaped tail. They have strong, thick necks. The booby's eyes are placed on either side of their bill and oriented towards the front. They have excellent binocular vision. The Blue-footed Booby's eyes are yellow. The male has more yellow on its iris than the female does. The Blue-footed Booby has permanently closed nostrils specialized for diving. They breathe through the corners of their mouths. Their feet range from a pale turquoise to a deep aquamarine. Males and younger birds have lighter feet than females do. Blue-footed Boobies are distributed among the continental coasts of the eastern Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos Islands and California. The Blue-footed Booby is strictly a marine bird. Their only need for land is to breed, which they do along rocky coasts. The courtship of the Blue-footed Booby consists of the male flaunting his blue feet and dancing to impress the female. During the dance, the male will spread his wings and stamp his feet on the ground. The Blue-footed Booby is a monogamous animal although they do have the potential to be bigamous. They reunite at their breeding grounds. The breeding cycle of the booby is every 8 to 9 months. When mating, the female parades and the male points his head and tail high to the sky and his wings are back to show off to the female. The male blue-footed booby also makes a high-piping whistle noise. Males do a dance to attract the females. The dance includes the males lifting their blue feet high and throwing their heads up. The blue-footed booby is not a seasonally reproducing species. They are opportunistic in their breeding. The female Blue-footed Booby lays two or three eggs. Both male and female take turns incubating the eggs, while the non-sitting bird keeps a watch. Since the Blue-footed Booby does not have a brooding patch (a patch of bare skin on the underbelly) it uses its feet to keep the eggs warm. The chicks cannot control their body temperature up until about one month old. Eggs are laid about 5 days apart. Blue-foots are one of only two species of booby that raise more than one chick. This may be because of the males specialized diving in shallow waters. They must be fed frequently, so the adults constantly hunt for fish. The chicks feed off the regurgitated fish in the adult's mouth. If the parent Blue-footed Booby does not have enough food for all of the chicks, it will only feed the biggest chick, ensuring that at least one will survive. Boobies may use and defend two or three nesting sites until they develop a preference a few weeks before the eggs are laid. Usually 2 to 3 eggs are laid and 1 to 2 chicks are hatched. The incubation period is 41–45 days. They nest on bare black lava in a small dip in the ground. The female will turn to face the sun throughout the day so the nest is surrounded by excretion. These nests are done in large colonies. The male and female share quite a bit of their responsibilities. The male will provide food for the young in the first part of their life because of his specialized diving and the female will take over when the demand is higher. The Blue-footed Booby's diet consists entirely of fish. Blue-footed Boobies are specialized fish eaters feeding on school fish like sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and flying fish. They also feed on squid and offal. It dives into the ocean, sometimes from a great height, and swims underwater in pursuit of its prey. It hunts singly, in pairs or in larger flocks. They travel in parties of 12 or so to areas of water with large schools of small fish. When the lead bird sees a fish shoal in the water, it will signal the rest of the group and they will all dive together to catch the fish. Surprisingly, individuals do not eat with the hunting group, preferring to eat on their own, usually in the early morning or late afternoon. When they spot a school they will all dive in unison. They will point their bodies down like a torpedo and dive into the water. Plunge diving can be done from heights of 33-100ft and even up to 330 ft (100 m). These birds hit the water around 60 mph (97 km/h) and can go to depths of 82 ft (25 m) below the water surface. The prey is usually eaten while the bird is still under water. Males and females fish differently which could contribute to the reasons that blue foots, unlike other boobies raise more than one young. The male is smaller and the tail is larger for its body which enables the male to fish in shallow areas instead of just deep waters. The tail can flatten out easier enabling him to change direction in the shallow water. The female is larger and can carry more food. The food is then regurgitated to the young. The males feed the young for the first part of the incubation period. This is done because the males can bring back food quicker than the female. When the demand for more food takes over the female provides the food to the young. Blue-foots will make raucous or polysyllabic grunts or shouts and thin whistle noise. The males of the species have been known to throw up their head and whistle at a female flying by. Their ritual displays are also a form of communication.

 

Espanola (Suarez Point)

Approximately a 10-12 hour trip from Santa Cruz, Española is the oldest and the southernmost island in the chain. The trip across open waters can be quite rough especially during August and September. Española's remote location helped make it a unique jewel with a large number of endemic creatures. Secluded from the other islands, wildlife on Española adapted to the island's environment and natural resources. The subspecies of Marine iguana from Española are the only ones that change color during breeding season. Normally, marine iguanas are black in color, a camouflage, making it difficult for predators to differentiate between the iguanas and the black lava rocks where they live. On Española adult marine iguanas are brightly colored with a reddish tint except during mating season when their color changes to more of a greenish shade. The Hood Mockingbird is also endemic to the island. These brazen birds have no fear of man and frequently land on visitors heads and shoulders searching for food. The Hood Mockingbird is slightly larger than other mockingbirds found in the Galapagos; its beak is longer and has a more curved shape. The Hood Mockingbird is the only carnivorous one of the species feeding on a variety of insects, turtle hatchlings and sea lion placentas. Wildlife is the highlight of Española and the star of the show is the waved albatross. The island's steep cliffs serve as the perfect runways for these large birds which take off for their ocean feeding grounds near the mainland of Ecuador and Peru abandoning the island between January and March. Known as endemic to the island, Española is the waved albatross's only nesting place. Each April the males return to Española followed shortly thereafter by the females. Mating for life, their ritual begins with the male's annual dance to re-attract his mate. The performance can take up to 5 days consisting of a series of strutting, honking, and beak fencing. Once the pair is reacquainted they produce a single egg and share the responsibility of incubation. The colony remains based on Española until December when the chick is fully grown. By January most of the colony leaves the island to fish along the Humboldt Current. Young albatross do not return to Española until their 4th or 5th year when they return to seek a mate. Geographically Española is a classic example of a shield volcano, created from a single caldera in the center of the island. Over the years as the island has moved further away from the hot spot, the volcano became extinct and erosion began to occur. Española's two visitor sites offer an exceptional island visit. Punta Suarez is one of the highlights of the Galapagos Islands. The variety and quantity of wildlife assures a memorable visit. Visitors find migrant, resident, and endemic wildlife including brightly colored Marine Iguanas, Española Lava Lizards, Hood Mockingbirds, Swallow Tailed Gulls, Blue Footed and Masked Boobies, Galapagos Hawks, a selection of Finch, and the Waved Albatross.Found on the western tip of Española, Punta Suarez offers great wildlife such as sea lions, sea birds and the largest marine iguanas of Galapagos. This is one of the best sites in the Galapagos. The amount of wildlife is overwhelming. Along the beach there are many sea lions and large, colorful lava lizards and marine iguanas. As you follow the trail to the cliff's edge masked boobies can be found nesting among the rock formations. After a short walk down to a beach and back up the other side blue-footed boobies are seen nesting just off the trail. The Galapagos Dove and very friendly Hood Mockingbird are commonly found in this area. The nearby bushes are frequently home to the large-cactus finch, warbler finch, small-ground finch and large-billed flycatcher. Continuing down the trail you come to the only place where waved albatross nest in the islands. Some 12,000 pairs nest on Española each year. The feeling is very dramatic and it seems like a desolate wilderness as the waves crash on the jagged cliffs below and the blowhole shoots water 50-70 feet/15-30 meters into the air. The sky above is full of sea birds including red-billed tropicbirds, American Oystercatchers, swallow-tailed gulls, and Audubon's Shearwaters.

 

Galapagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, some 900 km west of Ecuador. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature. Because of the only very recent arrival of man the majority of the wildlife has no fear of humans and will allow visitors to walk right up them, often having to step over Iguanas or Sea Lions.The Galápagos islands and its surrounding waters are part of a province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of around 40,000, which is a 40-fold expansion in 50 years. The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

NOTE TO LOCAL FRIENDS: Fish Creek Provincial Park is now closed to vehicle access.

 

"“We are asking all Albertans to assist us by complying with the public access restriction and to stay home during this critical time.

 

If you have plans to travel to a provincial park or provincial recreation area, please rethink your plans. We all need to do our part to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 among vulnerable Albertans ....” Minister of Environment and Parks, Jason Nixon. STAY HOME!

 

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These 10 photos are the last few that were taken on Day 11 of our 13-day trip to South Texas one year ago (March 2019). Some of the photos were drive-by photos taken through the windscreen or side window glass. I have messed around with them and just cannot try any more. These happen to be the ones I took with my Nikon, not the Canon, so they provide the GPS locations, which is why I am posting them. The next photos to be posted are from Day 12 and there are not many.

 

In the extremely difficult and stressful time that we are all in now, please do remember to be patient and to be kind and thankful to everyone who still has to work, especially Health Care workers - my daughter is one of them, and she said that she is overly stressed and exhausted, partly because of families and visitors who lose their temper over restrictions that have been put in place in the hospital.

 

About a week ago, I finally made a trip to a couple of stores, that I really didn't want to do. I knew that if there were a lot of people, I would instead turn around and go home. I needed food and I did buy an extra one of various items - but no hoarding. The cashier at the food store told me that one of the younger cashiers had been in tears because of being yelled at by some customers. At the drug store, the young woman cashier told me that she was so stressed out, again partly because of angry, yelling customers, that she was about to burst into tears. We had a talk, as there was no one waiting behind me in line, and I made sure to thank her for meticulously sanitizing the work space at the till. A few kind words can make all the difference, people! There were no line-ups at either store, for which I was extremely thankful. I know I do need to be very careful myself - I have 3 of the risk factors; age, high blood pressure, and the most concerning being a chronic cough that I have had for maybe 10 or so years, which sometimes turns into a coughing fit where I can't breath. Went through all sorts of tests but no one could find a cause. So, here I am, still coughing! The last thing I would want is the Coronavirus cough on top of it! Stay safe and well, everyone!!

 

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CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 16 March 2020: 74 confirmed cases in Alberta, 342 in Canada. 4 deaths in Canada - so far, all have been in British Columbia.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 17 March 2020: 97 confirmed cases in Alberta, 447 cases in Canada. 70 confirmed cases in the Calgary Zone. 7 deaths in Canada.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 18 March 2020: 119 confirmed cases in Alberta, 83 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 591 in Canada. 8 deaths in Canada.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 19 March 2020: 146 confirmed cases in Alberta, 101 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 736 in Canada. 9 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 20 March 2020: 195 (up from 146!) confirmed cases in Alberta, 101 confirmed cases in Calgary Zone, 846 in Canada. 10 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 22 March 2020: 259 (up from 226) confirmed cases in Alberta, 1,302 (up from 1,048) in Canada. 19 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 23 March 2020: 301 (up from 259) confirmed cases in Alberta, 1,432 (up from 1,302) in Canada. 20 deaths in Canada, 1 death in Alberta.

 

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE, 27 March 2020: 542 (up from 486) confirmed cases in Alberta, 4,074 (up from 4,018) in Canada. 337 in the Calgary Zone (1 death). 39 deaths in Canada, 2 deaths in Alberta. Completed tests (as of March 27) in Alberta 38,215 - 419 positive.

 

www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx

 

24 March 2020: "14 people sick at Calgary care centre (the McKenzie Towne Continuing Care Centre) where woman died of COVID-19."

 

calgary.ctvnews.ca/14-people-sick-at-calgary-care-centre-...

 

National Parks in Canada have now been shut down.

 

All Alberta provincial parks and public lands are now closed.

 

Olympics 2020 in Japan has been postponed to 2021.

 

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Saturday, 28 March 2020: our temperature early afternoon is -3C (windchill -7C). Sunrise is at 7:19 am, and sunset is at 8:04 pm. Very overcast today.

 

On Day 11, the first place we went to was the Birding and Nature Centre, on South Padre Island. The afternoon before, we had spent two hours there, but our "proper" visit was for three hours in the morning of Day 11. Such a great place!

 

www.spibirding.com/

 

Simply amazing artist! "The South Padre Island Convention Center boasts one of only 100 Wyland Whaling Wall murals. The mural titled "Orcas of the Gulf of Mexico," depicts life-sized killer whales and is number 53 of Wyland's Whaling Walls series."

 

This is a list of Whaling Walls, which are large outdoor murals by the artist Robert Wyland, featuring images of life-size gray whales, breaching humpback whales, blue whales, and other sea life. Whaling Walls (a pun on the Wailing Wall) are created by invitation of the communities, institutions, and building owners of the structures on which they are painted. The one hundredth and possibly final Whaling Wall was painted in Beijing in 2008" From Wikipedia.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Whaling_Walls

 

Someone told us about a different location, and a short drive south from the Centre took us to around W Sheepshead St and Laguna Blvd, where we saw a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Monarch butterflies, and a Green Anole (lizard).

 

We had our picnic lunch at the nearby Convention Centre, which is near the Birding and Nature Centre, and then looked for a Yellow-throated Warbler from the rear patio at the Centre. Amazingly, we did see it, along with a Black-and-white Warbler and a Wilson's Warbler. Not easy trying to photograph these fast-moving little birds that get hidden among the branches.

 

Driving north again, we called in at a beach that was part of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, where we could enjoy seeing the ocean waves and Laughing Gulls. This was our last stop before returning to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Brownsville.

 

The next day, 30 March 2019, we had to drive from Brownsville to Houston, where we stayed for one night at La Quinta Inn & Suites Houston. The following day, we flew from Bush Intl Airport back to Calgary. What a fantastic holiday we had!

This snow leopard, named Enif, lives at Banham Zoo in Norfolk. She arrived in 2006 from Tama Zoo in Japan.

 

The snow leopard is well adapted to its harsh environment. Its fur camouflages the cat against rocky terrain and protects it from cold temperatures. Their dense fur, 2 in. (50 mm) long on their back and sides and almost 5 in. (122 mm) long on their belly, is grey and dotted with black rosettes but white on the belly. Thick fur also covers the cat's wide paws, this minimizes heat loss. The paws also act as natural snowshoes helping distribute their weight over soft snow.

Snow leopards have short powerful legs and are tremendous jumpers, able to leap as far as 50 ft. (15.25 m), or approximately 6 times their body length. They have a stocky body, and an extremely long, bushy tail which they use for balancing and as blanket, curling it over the face to stay warm. Its short muzzle and small ears also help the animal conserve heat. While other big cats have golden eyes, the snow leopard's eyes are grey or green. Also, unlike other big cats, the snow leopard cannot roar. Male snow leopards are larger than females, but they have a similar appearance. On average, a snow leopard's length is between 30 to 59 in. (75 to 150 cm), plus a tail that's 31 to 41 in. (80 to 105 cm) long. The average snow leopard weighs between 49 to 121 lb. (22 to 55 kg). A large male may reach 165 lb. (75 kg), while a small female may weigh under 55 lb. (25 kg).

Shy and reclusive, and rarely seen in the wild, snow leopards inhabit steep, rugged terrain with rocky outcrops throughout the high mountain ranges of the Himalayas and the southern Siberian mountains in Russia. They can also be found in the Tibetan Plateau and across a range that stretches from China to the mountains of Central Asia. In the summer, the snow leopards live above the tree line from 8,900 to 19,700 ft. (2,700 to 6,000 m), but in the winter they descend to forests between 3,900 to 6,600 (1,220 to 2,000 m). While they are adapted to traverse rocky terrain and snow, snow leopards will follow trails made by people and animals if they are available. They require an enormous amount of space to roam, male leopards need up to 80 square miles, while females have ranges of up to 48 square miles. They can travel over 25 miles in a single night.

Snow leopards' prey upon the blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and the Himalayas, as well as the mountain ibex found over most of the rest of their range. Though these powerful predators can kill animals three times their weight, they also eat smaller fare, such as marmots, hares, and game birds. Snow leopards do not hunt adult yaks or humans. Usually they are solitary hunters, but pairs have been known to hunt together. One Indian snow leopard, protected and observed in a national park, is reported to have consumed five blue sheep, nine Tibetan woolly hares, 25 marmots, five domestic goats, one domestic sheep, and 15 birds in a single year.

Snow leopards' mate in late winter. The female finds a rocky den, which she lines with fur from her belly. After a 90 to100 day gestation, she gives birth to 1 to 5 black-spotted cubs. Like domestic kittens, snow leopard cubs are blind at birth. Cubs are weaned by 10 weeks of age and remain with their mother for up to 18 to 22 months. At that point, the young cats travel great distances to seek their new home. Scientists believe this trait naturally reduces the chance of inbreeding. In the wild, most cats live between 15 and 18 years, but snow leopards live about 25 years in captivity.

Despite a range of over 772,200 sq. miles (2 million km2), scientist estimate that there may only be between 3,920 and 6,390 snow leopards left in the wild. As an apex predator, adult snow leopards are not hunted by other animals. Cubs may be eaten by birds of prey, but only humans hunt the adult cat for its fur and body parts. It is also killed to protect livestock. Humans also hunt the leopard's prey, forcing the animal to encroach on human settlements to find food.

The snow leopard was on the endangered species list from 1972 until 2017. The IUCN Red List now categorizes the snow leopard as 'Vulnerable'.

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A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. The two surviving species of camel are the dromedary, or one-humped camel (C. dromedarius), which inhabits the Middle East and the Horn of Africa; and the bactrian, or two-humped camel (C. bactrianus), which inhabits Central Asia. Both species have been domesticated; they provide milk, meat, hair for textiles or goods such as felted pouches, and are working animals with tasks ranging from human transport to bearing loads.

 

The term "camel" is derived via Latin and Greek (camelus and κάμηλος kamēlos respectively) from Hebrew or Phoenician gāmāl.

 

"Camel" is also used more broadly to describe any of the six camel-like mammals in the family Camelidae: the two true camels and the four New World camelids: the llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña of South America.

 

BIOLOGY

The average life expectancy of a camel is 40 to 50 years. A full-grown adult camel stands 1.85 m at the shoulder and 2.15 m at the hump. Camels can run at up to 65 km/h in short bursts and sustain speeds of up to 40 km/h. Bactrian camels weigh 300 to 1,000 kg and dromedaries 300 to 600 kg.

 

The male dromedary camel has in its throat an organ called a dulla, a large, inflatable sac he extrudes from his mouth when in rut to assert dominance and attract females. It resembles a long, swollen, pink tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Camels mate by having both male and female sitting on the ground, with the male mounting from behind. The male usually ejaculates three or four times within a single mating session. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position.

 

ECOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ADAPTIONS

Camels do not directly store water in their humps as was once commonly believed. The humps are actually reservoirs of fatty tissue: concentrating body fat in their humps minimizes the insulating effect fat would have if distributed over the rest of their bodies, helping camels survive in hot climates. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration (as oxygen is required for the metabolic process): overall, there is a net decrease in water.

 

Camels have a series of physiological adaptations that allow them to withstand long periods of time without any external source of water. Unlike other mammals, their red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration and makes them better at withstanding high osmotic variation without rupturing when drinking large amounts of water: a 600 kg camel can drink 200 L of water in three minutes.

 

Camels are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other animals. Their temperature ranges from 34 °C at dawn and steadily increases to 40 °C by sunset, before they cool off at night again. Maintaining the brain temperature within certain limits is critical for animals; to assist this, camels have a rete mirabile, a complex of arteries and veins lying very close to each other which utilizes countercurrent blood flow to cool blood flowing to the brain. Camels rarely sweat, even when ambient temperatures reach 49 °C Any sweat that does occur evaporates at the skin level rather than at the surface of their coat; the heat of vaporization therefore comes from body heat rather than ambient heat. Camels can withstand losing 25% of their body weight to sweating, whereas most other mammals can withstand only about 12–14% dehydration before cardiac failure results from circulatory disturbance.

 

When the camel exhales, water vapor becomes trapped in their nostrils and is reabsorbed into the body as a means to conserve water. Camels eating green herbage can ingest sufficient moisture in milder conditions to maintain their bodies' hydrated state without the need for drinking.

 

The camels' thick coats insulate them from the intense heat radiated from desert sand; a shorn camel must sweat 50% more to avoid overheating. During the summer the coat becomes lighter in color, reflecting light as well as helping avoid sunburn. The camel's long legs help by keeping its body farther from the ground, which can heat up to 70 °C. Dromedaries have a pad of thick tissue over the sternum called the pedestal. When the animal lies down in a sternal recumbent position, the pedestal raises the body from the hot surface and allows cooling air to pass under the body.

 

Camels' mouths have a thick leathery lining, allowing them to chew thorny desert plants. Long eyelashes and ear hairs, together with nostrils that can close, form a barrier against sand. If sand gets lodged in their eyes, they can dislodge it using their transparent third eyelid. The camels' gait and widened feet help them move without sinking into the sand.

 

The kidneys and intestines of a camel are very efficient at reabsorbing water. Camel urine comes out as a thick syrup, and camel feces are so dry that they do not require drying when the Bedouins use them to fuel fires.

 

Camels' immune system differs from those of other mammals. Normally, the Y-shaped antibody molecules consist of two heavy (or long) chains along the length of the Y, and two light (or short) chains at each tip of the Y. Camels, in addition to these, also have antibodies made of only two heavy chains, a trait that makes them smaller and more durable. These "heavy-chain-only" antibodies, discovered in 1993, are thought to have developed 50 million years ago, after camelids split from ruminants and pigs.

 

GENETICS

The karyotypes of different camelid species have been studied earlier by many groups, but no agreement on chromosome nomenclature of camelids has been reached. A 2007 study flow sorted camel chromosomes, building on the fact that camels have 37 pairs of chromosomes (2n=74), and found that the karyotime consisted of one metacentric, three submetacentric, and 32 acrocentric autosomes. The Y is a small metacentric chromosome, while the X is a large metacentric chromosome.The hybrid camel, a hybrid between Bactrian and dromedary camels, has one hump, though it has an indentation 4–12 cm deep that divides the front from the back. The hybrid is 2.15 m at the shoulder and 2.32 m tall at the hump. It weighs an average of 650 kg and can carry around 400 to 450 kg, which is more than either the dromedary or Bactrian can. According to molecular data, the New World and Old World camelids diverged 11 million years ago. In spite of this, these species can still hybridize and produce fertile offspring. The cama is a camel–llama hybrid bred by scientists who wanted to see how closely related the parent species were. Scientists collected semen from a camel via an artificial vagina and inseminated a llama after stimulating ovulation with gonadotrophin injections. The cama has ears halfway between the length of camel and llama ears, no hump, longer legs than the llama, and partially cloven hooves. According to cama breeder Lulu Skidmore, cama have "the fleece of the llamas" and "the strength and patience of the camel". Like the mule, camas are sterile, despite both parents having the same number of chromosomes.

 

EVOLUTION

The earliest known camel, called Protylopus, lived in North America 40 to 50 million years ago (during the Eocene). It was about the size of a rabbit and lived in the open woodlands of what is now South Dakota. By 35 million years ago, the Poebrotherium was the size of a goat and had many more traits similar to camels and llamas. The hoofed Stenomylus, which walked on the tips of its toes, also existed around this time, and the long-necked Aepycamelus evolved in the Miocene.

 

The direct ancestor of all modern camels, Procamelus, existed in the upper Miocone and lower Pliocene. Around 3–5 million years ago, the North American Camelidae spread to South America via the Isthmus of Panama, where they gave rise to guanacos and related animals, and to Asia via the Bering land bridge. Surprising finds of fossil Paracamelus on Ellesmere Island beginning in 2006 in the high Canadian Arctic indicate the dromedary is descended from a larger, boreal browser whose hump may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate. This creature is estimated to have stood around nine feet tall.

 

The last camel native to North America was Camelops hesternus, which vanished along with horses, short-faced bears, mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, sabertooth cats, and many other megafauna, coinciding with the migration of humans from Asia.

 

DOMESTICATION

Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.

 

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

 

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC, as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.

 

Discussions concerning camel domestication in Mesopotamia are often related to mentions of camels in the Hebrew Bible. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J for instance mentions that "In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels."

 

Martin Heide's 2010 work on the domestication of the camel tentatively concludes that the bactrian camel was domesticated by at least the middle of the third millennium somewhere east of the Zagros Mountains, then moving into Mesopotamia, and suggests that mentions of camels "in the patriarchal narratives may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel." while noting that the camel is not mentioned in relationship to Canaan.

 

Recent excavations in the Timna Valley by Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef discovered what may be the earliest domestic camel bones found in Israel or even outside the Arabian peninsula, dating to around 930 BCE. This garnered considerable media coverage as it was described as evidence that the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Jacob and Esau were written after this time.

 

The existence of camels in Mesopotamia but not in Israel is not a new idea. According to an article in Time Magazine, the historian Richard Bulliet wrote in his 1975 book "The Camel and the Wheel" that "the occasional mention of camels in patriarchal narratives does not mean that the domestic camels were common in the Holy Land at that period." The archaeologist William F. Albright writing even earlier saw camels in the Bible as an anachronism. The official report by Sapir-Hen and Ben-Joseph notes that "The introduction of the dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) as a pack animal to the southern Levant signifies a crucial juncture in the history of the region; it substantially facilitated trade across the vast deserts of Arabia, promoting both economic and social change (e.g., Kohler 1984; Borowski 1998: 112-116; Jasmin 2005). This, together with the depiction of camels in the Patriarchal narrative, has generated extensive discussion regarding the date of the earliest domestic camel in the southern Levant (and beyond) (e.g., Albright 1949: 207; Epstein 1971: 558-584; Bulliet 1975; Zarins 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1993; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 2002; Jasmin 2005; 2006; Heide 2010; Rosen and Saidel 2010; Grigson 2012). Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)" and concludes that "Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region - attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I - raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade."

 

MILITARY USES

By at least 1200 BC, the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500–100 BC, Bactrian camels attained military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC, the military Arabian saddle appeared, which improved the saddle design again slightly.

 

Camel cavalries have been used in wars throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into modern-day Border Security Force of India (though as of July 2012, the BSF has planned the replacement of camels with ATVs). The first use of camel cavalries was in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Armies have also used camels as freight animals instead of horses and mules.

In the East Roman Empire, the Romans used auxiliary forces known as dromedarii, whom they recruited in desert provinces. The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close ranges (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra.

 

19th and 20th CENTURIES

The United States Army established the U.S. Camel Corps, which was stationed in California in the late 19th century. One may still see stables at the Benicia Arsenal in Benicia, California, where they nowadays serve as the Benicia Historical Museum. Though the experimental use of camels was seen as a success (John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in 1858, recommended that funds be allocated towards obtaining a thousand more camels), the outbreak of the American Civil War saw the end of the Camel Corps: Texas became part of the Confederacy, and most of the camels were left to wander away into the desert.

 

France created a méhariste camel corps in 1912 as part of the Armée d'Afrique in the Sahara in order to exercise greater control over the camel-riding Tuareg and Arab insurgents, as previous efforts to defeat them on foot had failed. The camel-mounted units remained in service until the end of French rule over Algeria in 1962.

 

In 1916, the British created the Imperial Camel Corps. It was originally used to fight the Senussi, but was later used in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Imperial Camel Corps comprised infantrymen mounted on camels for movement across desert, though they dismounted at battle sites and fought on foot. After July 1918, the Corps began to become run down, receiving no new reinforcements, and was formally disbanded in 1919.

 

In World War I, the British Army also created the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps, which consisted of a group of Egyptian camel drivers and their camels. The Corps supported British war operations in Sinai, Palestine, and Syria by transporting supplies to the troops.

 

The Somaliland Camel Corps was created by colonial authorities in British Somaliland in 1912; it was disbanded in 1944.

 

Bactrian camels were used by Romanian forces during World War II in the Caucasian region.

 

The Bikaner Camel Corps of British India fought alongside the British Indian Army in World Wars I and II.

 

The Tropas Nómadas (Nomad Troops) were an auxiliary regiment of Sahrawi tribesmen serving in the colonial army in Spanish Sahara (today Western Sahara). Operational from the 1930s until the end of the Spanish presence in the territory in 1975, the Tropas Nómadas were equipped with small arms and led by Spanish officers. The unit guarded outposts and sometimes conducted patrols on camelback.

 

FOOD USES

DAIRY

Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal in and of itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk is rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, and immunoglobulins; compared to cow's milk, it is lower in fat and lactose, and higher in potassium, iron, and vitamin C. Bedouins believe the curative powers of camel milk are enhanced if the camel's diet consists of certain desert plants. Camel milk can readily be made into a drinkable yogurt, as well as butter or cheese, though the yields for cheese tend to be low.

 

Camel milk cannot be made into butter by the traditional churning method. It can be made if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added. Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Developing less wasteful uses of the milk, the FAO commissioned Professor J.P. Ramet of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, who was able to produce curdling by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet. The cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. The sale of camel cheese is limited owing to the small output of the few dairies producing camel cheese and the absence of camel cheese in local (West African) markets. Cheese imports from countries that traditionally breed camels are difficult to obtain due to restrictions on dairy imports from these regions.

 

Additionally, camel milk has been made into ice cream in a Netherlands camel farm.

 

MEAT

A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The male dromedary carcass can weigh 300–400 kg, while the carcass of a male Bactrian can weigh up to 650 kg. The carcass of a female dromedary weighs less than the male, ranging between 250 and 350 kg. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. Camel meat is reported to taste like coarse beef, but older camels can prove to be very tough, although camel meat becomes more tender the more it is cooked. The Abu Dhabi Officers' Club serves a camel burger mixed with beef or lamb fat in order to improve the texture and taste. In Karachi, Pakistan, some restaurants prepare nihari from camel meat. In Syria and Egypt, there are specialist camel butchers.

 

Camel meat has been eaten for centuries. It has been recorded by ancient Greek writers as an available dish at banquets in ancient Persia, usually roasted whole. The ancient Roman emperor Heliogabalus enjoyed camel's heel.[31] Camel meat is still eaten in certain regions, including Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and other arid regions where alternative forms of protein may be limited or where camel meat has had a long cultural history. Camel blood is also consumable, as is the case among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where camel blood is drunk with milk and acts as a key source of iron, vitamin D, salts and minerals. Camel meat is also occasionally found in Australian cuisine: for example, a camel lasagna is available in Alice Springs.

 

A 2005 report issued jointly by the Saudi Ministry of Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details cases of human bubonic plague resulting from the ingestion of raw camel liver.

 

RELIGION

ISLAM

Camel meat is halal for Muslims. However, according to some Islamic schools of thought, a state of impurity is brought on by the consumption of it. Consequently, these schools hold that Muslims must perform wudhu (ablution) before the next time they pray after eating camel meat.

 

Also, some Islamic schools of thought consider it haraam for a Muslim to perform salat in places where camels lie, as it is said to be a dwelling place of shaytan.

 

According to Suni ahadith collected by Bukhari and Muslim, Muhammad ordered a certain group of people to drink camel milk and urine as a medicine. However, according to Abū Ḥanīfa, the drinking of camel urine, while not forbidden (ḥaram), is disliked (makrūh) in Islam.

 

Camel urine is sold as traditional medicine in shops in Saudi Arabia. The Sunni scholar Muhammad Al-Munajjid's IslamQA.info recommends camel urine as beneficial to curing certain diseases and to human health and cited Ahadith and scientific studies as justification. King Abdulaziz University researcher Dr. Faten Abdel-Rajman Khorshid has claimed that cancer and other diseases could be treated with camel urine as recommended by the Prophet. The United Arab Emirates "Arab Science and Technology Foundation" reported that cancer could be treated with camel urine. Camel urine was also prescribed as a treatment by Zaghloul El-Naggar, a religious scholar. Camel urine is the only urine which is permitted to be drunk according to the Hanbali madhhab of Sunni Islam. The World Health Organization said that camel urine consumption may be a factor in the spread of the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Times writer Ahmad al-Sayyed wrote that various afflictions are dealt with camel urine by people. Dandruff, scalp ailments, hair, sores, and wounds were recommended to be treated with camel urine by Ibn Sina. Arab American University Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology Bashar Saad (PhD) along with Omar Said (PhD) wrote that medicinal use of camel urine is approved of and promoted by Islam since it was recommended by the prophet. A test on mice found that cytotoxic effects similar to cyclophosphamide were induced on bone marrow by camel urine. Besides for consumption as a medicinal drink, camel urine is believed to help treat hair. Bites from insects were warded off with camel urine, which also served as a shampoo. Camel urine is also used to help treat asthma, infections, treat hair, sores, hair growth and boost libido.

 

Several Sunni Ahadith mention drinking camel urine. Some Shia criticized Wahhabis for camel urine treatment. Shia scholars also recommend the medicinal use of camel urine. Shia Hadith on Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq reported that shortness of breath (asthma) was treated with camel urine. Shia Marja Ayatollah Sistani said that for medicinal purposes only, sheep, cow, and camel urine can be drunk.

 

JUDAISM

According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not possess cloven hooves:

 

Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that only chew the cud, or of them that only part the hoof: the camel, because he cheweth the cud but parteth not the hoof, he is unclean unto you.

— Leviticus 11:4

 

DISTRIBUTION ANDNUMBERS

There are around 14 million camels alive as of 2010, with 90% being dromedaries. Dromedaries alive today are domesticated animals (mostly living in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Maghreb, Middle East and South Asia). The Horn region alone has the largest concentration of camels in the world, where the dromedaries constitute an important part of local nomadic life. They provide nomadic people in Somalia (which has the largest camel herd in the world) and Ethiopia with milk, food, and transportation.

 

The Bactrian camel is, as of 2010, reduced to an estimated 1.4 million animals, most of which are domesticated. The only truly wild Bactrian camels, of which there are less than one thousand, are thought to inhabit the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.

 

The largest population of feral camels is in Australia. There are around 700,000 feral dromedary camels in central parts of Australia, descended from those introduced as a method of transport in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This population is growing about 8% per year. Representatives of the Australian government have culled more than 100,000 of the animals in part because the camels use too much of the limited resources needed by sheep farmers.

 

A small population of introduced camels, dromedaries and Bactrians, wandered through Southwest United States after having been imported in the 1800s as part of the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. When the project ended, they were used as draft animals in mines and escaped or were released. Twenty-five U.S. camels were bought and imported to Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush.

 

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www.eaue.de/winuwd/47.htm Abstract:

 

Vienna waste management policy has taken important steps towards the installation of separated collection systems since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the effects of separate collection had been underestimated for a long time, new strategies in the field of waste minimization and recycling have been implemented with considerable success. For example in 1994 (and for the first time) the quantity of household mixed waste did not increase in the City of Vienna. The following years, however, again showed an increase in municipal solid waste. In 1998 the increase in mixed household waste was once again nearly stopped but the quantity of recyclable waste continued to rise. The combination of recycling, incineration, and dumping practices is still aiming at the best possible ecological standards. The new policy is a remarkable achievement for the following reasons:

 

waste minimization principles have become an essential part of waste management;

waste management is focusing on the best ecological standards;

special attention is given to the limitation of waste dumping;

rapid progress has been made with organic waste and waste-to-energy systems;

the exploitation of material flow is regarded as an activity of increasing importance.

 

Concept and aims

 

For far too long the management of the economy has been marked by a narrow focus on the production of goods, their supply and consumption, while waste management has been dealt with secondarily and in isolation. Waste management has previously not been regarded as an operational tool that is able to influence the flow of materials and substances. Now, in order to achieve a sustainable waste policy, the principles of waste management have to be re-examined and upgraded. The aim should be to establish ecological products and services for each waste fraction. In 1998 Vienna’s waste volume in terms of mixed household waste did not keep growing as it had during previous years. This was the result of a waste management policy that started to tackle the different types of waste with new approaches. A basic principle of ecological waste management is the requirement that any waste that can neither be avoided nor recycled must be pre-treated in such a way that it is not a future environmental burden nor does it cause major costs in terms of monitoring and supervision of permanent disposal sites.

 

In 1999 the Vienna waste concept included the following strategies for waste minimization:

 

analysis of further potentials for waste-avoidance;

further exploitation of re-use of waste, including the splitting of mixed waste

and the improvement of separated collection practices,

setting up of new information and consultancy activities;

new purchasing policy for waste-reduction;

intensification of cooperation with industries in order to promote a sustainable economy.

 

The minimization strategies work with the following principles:

 

continuous analysis of the potential for a closed-cycle policy for each waste fraction;

further extension of the separated collection systems;

measures for increasing the acceptance of recycled products;

new pricing policy for landfill sites;

incineration should be less costly than dumping;

incinerated waste should be less costly than ordinary waste;

extension of the district heating distribution network;

the reutilization of construction and demolition waste should be optimized by new control instruments like an excavation database, a balancing policy of excavation and refilling, and inclusion of environmental standards in the public building sector.

  

Implementation

 

Vienna waste management initiatives have generally concentrated on waste-prevention (KLIP-Program) and on other special fields such as maintenance, reuse and education, as well as on recovering organic and building waste. Vienna has been able to show substantial improvements in these areas.

 

Waste Prevention

 

Waste prevention programs emphasize PR campaigns supported by various publications that for example explain how and where appliances can be repaired or where products and services can be rented. Further information illustrates how things can be reused and how wastes can better be handled. A next step is to develop information concerning specific waste prevention techniques for application in private households.

 

In 1995 the City launched the Viennese Climate Protection Program (KLIP) to develop guidelines for a climate protection action plan. This process involved more than 300 people from over 150 departments in Vienna’s administration as well as municipal services and external organizations.

 

Prioritizing feasibility, KLIP has developed 35 different measures regarding energy, traffic, and procurement and waste management efforts. Altogether these are expected to result in a reduction of 25% in carbon dioxide emissions per capita per year. While the ambitious Climate Alliance goal of a 50% reduction is desirable, it can not practically be achieved by the year 2010: Vienna has already reduced its annual emissions to about 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide per capita (compared to Frankfurt with its 13.8 !), and therefor does not have the same large opportunities for further reductions as other large European cities.

 

To move away from “end of the pipe” technologies and toward precautionary and preventive strategies, Vienna launched the project for environmentally sound public procurement (ÖKOKAUF WIEN). Introduced in 1998 with the help of about 200 experts, this project has developed criteria for procurement in areas such as construction, house-keeping and cleaning, electrical appliances, paper and printing services, food services, and water and lighting systems.

 

Also important is the Vienna EcoBusiness Plan that deals with the implementation of environmental initiatives through working with professional consultants to assist environmental initiatives in private companies and institutions. This Plan involves four special prevention and waste management programs: EMAS, Ecoprofit, Companies in the Climate Alliance, and Eco-Label Tourism.

 

Organic waste management

 

Organic waste management had already been established in Vienna by 1956, when the first organic waste composting plant went into operation. However, in 1981 this policy had to be abandoned as the compost -- which was produced from residual waste -- had become too polluted. Nevertheless, the idea was again pursued when separate collection systems were introduced.

 

After organic waste bin prototypes proved to be promising, the City of Vienna started research into a suitable method of composting. Between 1988 and 1990 developments concentrated on de-composting processes, and on the quality of finished products. In addition, possibilities for using artificially aerated de-composting systems were tested.

 

The new Lobau composting plant is located in an open area of 5.2 hectares. The process of de-composting takes between six and ten months, through which the waste is converted into humus. This resulting compost is mainly used at municipally-owned agricultural sites or distributed to Vienna residents for use in their gardens. In 1998 nearly 26,000 tons of first class compost were produced and sent on to farms and gardens. A second plant was developed at Schafflerhof in 1993 to manage the increasing volume of separately collected organic waste.

 

The basic policy of Viennese organic waste management is to produce first class compost with the lowest possible content of heavy metals and other impurities. It must be guaranteed that the compost is suitable for applications in organic farming.

 

Waste-to-energy policy and the Vienna incineration systems

 

At present there are three plants in Austria licensed to burn household wastes. There are two plants in Vienna, which in 1998 incinerated a total volume of 430,400 tons compared to a total waste quantity of 872,000 tons.

 

Waste-to-energy production covered 21.9% of Vienna’s district heating requirements (Spittelau, Flötzersteig, and EbS). The district heating network is 800 km in total length and it provides heating for more than 180,000 households and an additional 4,000 industrial customers.

 

The waste-treatment company Entsorgungsbetriebe Simmering (EbS) was founded in the 1970s in the 11th District of Vienna. Simmering processes 75,000 tons of hazardous waste per year and operates two rotary kilns for incinerating such wastes, with a combined capacity of 70,000 tons per year. Daily between 3,000 and 4,000 cubic meters of sewage sludge from Vienna’s main treatment plant are thickened to a dry matter with a water content of 35% and then incinerated at a temperature of 850° C in three fluidized bed kilns. Instead of using fuel oil to burn the sewage sludge, a special waste (organic liquids that are processed from non-recyclable packaging wastes) is burned as this has a higher thermal value. As the plants are equipped with flue gas purification and other automatically controlled systems, the level of dioxin does not exceed the values permissible under law. Activated carbon filters have also been installed and have been in operation since 1992 for the further removal of dioxins.

 

This treatment process is currently regarded as an exemplary model.

Results and Impacts

 

The Vienna waste collection system has installed approximately 200, 000 containers for household waste. For special collections there are 153,600 containers in use of which 77,900 are for paper, 43,400 are for organics, 17,600 are for glass, 8,500 are for plastics, and 6,200 are for metals.

 

With regard to organic waste, the City of Vienna has made rapid progress in implementing its ordinances. The 43,400 containers for organic waste have been installed at more than 16,000 locations across the city. In 1988 the organic waste project started with only 726 containers. On average there are 162 containers per square kilometer of developed urban area.

 

In Vienna the average distance to the nearest container is less than 60 meters and in highly built up districts the system is even better with an average distance of less than 20 meters to the nearest organic bin. There is no extra levy on organic wastes. In 1998 the volume of collected organic waste amounted to 90,000 tons.

 

In the waste-to-energy sector the City of Vienna can also rely on a progressive infrastructure for district heating. In 1998 70.2% of district heating was produced by combined power and heat systems, 21.9% came from waste incineration and only 7.9% from the regional power grid (Verbundnetz). This policy led to a savings of 70% of primary energy sources -- which is equivalent to about 271 million kilograms of heating oil. The savings in CO2 emissions is 873,000 tons per annum.

 

In 1998 49% of the waste was incinerated, 40% of the waste recycled, and 11% of the waste land-filled.

 

Actors and Structures

 

Department No. 48 of the Vienna municipal authority is responsible for waste management policy as well as urban clean-ups and the waste collection fleet. In 1998 the authority had a staff of 3,377.

 

The incineration plants at Spittelau and Flötzersteig are operated by Fernwärme Wien GmbH, a private company which originated from the municipal utilities and whose core business is district-heating. The plants are owned by the City of Vienna. The incineration plant for special waste is operated by the private company Simmering GmbH.

Source of Information

 

Personal communication with Dipl.-Ing. Helmut Löffler, Senatsrat Wien, 1999.

 

Spet, Gerhardt 1995: Das Wiener Abfallwirtschaftskonzept.

 

Spet, Gerhardt 1998: Das Wiener Abfallwirtschaftskonzept: Abfallentwicklung - Überblick - Ausblick, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 5-8.

 

Lukesch, Heinz 1995: Die Wiener Abfallverbrennungssysteme, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 14-19.

 

Stanke, Herbert 1995: Der Wiener Weg der Rauchgasreinigung nach Abfallverbrennungsanlagen, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 20-23.

 

Gilnreiner, Gerhard 1995: Deponien der Zukunft - Modelle und Visionen, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 26-28.

 

Rogalski, Wojciech 1995: Theorie und Praxis einer modernen Bioabfallwirtschaft oder die Möglichkeit, Kreisläufe zu schliessen, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 33-37.

 

Zika, Adalbert 1995: Strom aus Deponiegas, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 38-42.

 

Redl, Walter 1995: im Bereich der Wiederverwertung Ein Beispiel aus Wien, in: Perspektiven, Nr.1, S. 43-47.

 

Löffler, Helmut 1995: Improvement of Air Quality by Waste Incineration in Vienna, in: EA.UE, (ed.), Urban Environmental Improvements in Vienna’s 7th District. Conference of Central European Metropoles, Berlin, pp. 32-38.

 

Krobath, Phillip 1999: Fernwärme Wien GmbH - Chemistry & Environment,: private communications.

 

Engler, Carola 1999: Entsorgungsbetriebe Simmering - Public Relations.: private communications.

 

Municipal Department 22, 1999: News on Vienna’s environmental and urban technologies - Environmental protection: The City of Vienna’s climate protection program, pp. 13-16.

Contact:

Name:Löffler

Firstname:Helmut

Telefon:++43 / 1 / 4000 88 211

Telefax:++43 / 1 / 4000 88 215

Address:Helmut Löffler

Head of the Department for

Environmental Protection

Leiter der Magistratsabteilung

 

MA 22 Umweltschutz

A - 1082 Wien

  

A konfetti rose shot inside my homemade light box using a tripod and remote shutter release to minimize shutter shake.

 

Here's the link to how I created the light box:

 

flickr.com/photos/jeffclow/318985211/

 

I photographed this with my Nikon D80 paired with the 18-200 mm Nikkor lens..... and with the aperture set at f22.

One of the Marine Iguanas swimming off Suarez Point on Espanola. Looks like that bit in Alien Resurection where the Aliens are swimming after the people!

 

Marine Iguana

The Marine Iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) is an iguana found only on the Galapagos Islands that has the ability, unique among modern lizards, to live and forage in the sea. It has spread to all the islands in the archipelago, and is sometimes called the Galapagos Marine Iguana. It mainly lives on the rocky Galapagos shore, but can also be spotted in marshes and mangrove beaches. On his visit to the islands, Charles Darwin was revolted by the animals' appearance, writing “The black Lava rocks on the beach are frequented by large (2-3 ft), disgusting clumsy Lizards. They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey from the Sea. I call them 'imps of darkness'. They assuredly well become the land they inhabit.” In fact, Amblyrhynchus cristatus is not always black; the young have a lighter coloured dorsal stripe, and some adult specimens are grey. The reason for the sombre tones is that the species must rapidly absorb heat to minimize the period of lethargy after emerging from the water. They feed almost exclusively on marine algae, expelling the excess salt from nasal glands while basking in the sun, and the coating of salt can make their faces appear white. In adult males, coloration varies with the season. Breeding-season adult males on the southern islands are the most colorful and will acquire reddish and teal-green colors, while on Santa Cruz they are brick red and black, and on Fernandina they are brick red and dull greenish. Another difference between the iguanas is size, which is different depending on the island the individual iguana inhabits. The iguanas living on the islands of Fernandina and Isabela (named for the famous rulers of Spain) are the largest found anywhere in the Galápagos. On the other end of the spectrum, the smallest iguanas are found on the island on Genovesa. Adult males are approximately 1.3 m long, females 0.6 m, males weigh up to 1.5 kg. On land, the marine iguana is rather a clumsy animal, but in the water it is a graceful swimmer, using its powerful tail to propel itself. As an exothermic animal, the marine iguana can spend only a limited time in the cold sea, where it dives for algae. However, by swimming only in the shallow waters around the island they are able to survive single dives of up to half an hour at depths of more than 15 m. After these dives, they return to their territory to bask in the sun and warm up again. When cold, the iguana is unable to move effectively, making them vulnerable to predation, so they become highly aggressive before heating up (since they are unable to run away they try to bite attackers in this state). During the breeding season, males become highly territorial. The males assemble large groups of females to mate with, and guard them against other male iguanas. However, at other times the species is only aggressive when cold. Marine iguanas have also been found to change their size to adapt to varying food conditions. During El Niño conditions when the algae that the iguanas feed on was scarce for a period of two years, some were found to decrease their length by as much as 20%. When food conditions returned to normal, the iguanas returned to their pre-famine size. It is speculated that the bones of the iguanas actually shorten as a shrinkage of connective tissue could only account for a 10% length change. Researchers theorize that land and marine iguanas evolved from a common ancestor since arriving on the islands from South America, presumably by driftwood. It is thought that the ancestral species inhabited a part of the volcanic archipelago that is now submerged. A second school of thought holds that the Marine iguana may have evolved from a now extinct family of seagoing reptiles. Its generic name, Amblyrhynchus, is a combination of two Greek words, Ambly- from Amblus meaning "blunt" and rhynchus meaning "snout". Its specific name is the Latin word cristatus meaning "crested," and refers to the low crest of spines along the animal's back. Amblyrhynchus is a monotypic genus in that Amblyrhynchus cristatus is the only species which belongs to it at this point in time. This species is completely protected under the laws of Ecuador. El Niño effects cause periodic declines in population, with high mortality, and the marine iguana is threatened by predation by exotic species. The total population size is unknown, but is, according to IUCN, at least 50,000, and estimates from the Charles Darwin Research Station are in the hundreds of thousands. The marine iguanas have not evolved to combat newer predators. Therefore, cats and dogs eat both the young iguanas and dogs will kill adults due to the iguanas' slow reflex times and tameness. Dogs are especially common around human settlements and can cause tremendous predation. Cats are also common in towns, but they also occur in numbers in remote areas where they take a toll on iguanas.

 

Espanola (Suarez Point)

Approximately a 10-12 hour trip from Santa Cruz, Española is the oldest and the southernmost island in the chain. The trip across open waters can be quite rough especially during August and September. Española's remote location helped make it a unique jewel with a large number of endemic creatures. Secluded from the other islands, wildlife on Española adapted to the island's environment and natural resources. The subspecies of Marine iguana from Española are the only ones that change color during breeding season. Normally, marine iguanas are black in color, a camouflage, making it difficult for predators to differentiate between the iguanas and the black lava rocks where they live. On Española adult marine iguanas are brightly colored with a reddish tint except during mating season when their color changes to more of a greenish shade. The Hood Mockingbird is also endemic to the island. These brazen birds have no fear of man and frequently land on visitors heads and shoulders searching for food. The Hood Mockingbird is slightly larger than other mockingbirds found in the Galapagos; its beak is longer and has a more curved shape. The Hood Mockingbird is the only carnivorous one of the species feeding on a variety of insects, turtle hatchlings and sea lion placentas. Wildlife is the highlight of Española and the star of the show is the waved albatross. The island's steep cliffs serve as the perfect runways for these large birds which take off for their ocean feeding grounds near the mainland of Ecuador and Peru abandoning the island between January and March. Known as endemic to the island, Española is the waved albatross's only nesting place. Each April the males return to Española followed shortly thereafter by the females. Mating for life, their ritual begins with the male's annual dance to re-attract his mate. The performance can take up to 5 days consisting of a series of strutting, honking, and beak fencing. Once the pair is reacquainted they produce a single egg and share the responsibility of incubation. The colony remains based on Española until December when the chick is fully grown. By January most of the colony leaves the island to fish along the Humboldt Current. Young albatross do not return to Española until their 4th or 5th year when they return to seek a mate. Geographically Española is a classic example of a shield volcano, created from a single caldera in the center of the island. Over the years as the island has moved further away from the hot spot, the volcano became extinct and erosion began to occur. Española's two visitor sites offer an exceptional island visit. Punta Suarez is one of the highlights of the Galapagos Islands. The variety and quantity of wildlife assures a memorable visit. Visitors find migrant, resident, and endemic wildlife including brightly colored Marine Iguanas, Española Lava Lizards, Hood Mockingbirds, Swallow Tailed Gulls, Blue Footed and Masked Boobies, Galapagos Hawks, a selection of Finch, and the Waved Albatross.Found on the western tip of Española, Punta Suarez offers great wildlife such as sea lions, sea birds and the largest marine iguanas of Galapagos. This is one of the best sites in the Galapagos. The amount of wildlife is overwhelming. Along the beach there are many sea lions and large, colorful lava lizards and marine iguanas. As you follow the trail to the cliff's edge masked boobies can be found nesting among the rock formations. After a short walk down to a beach and back up the other side blue-footed boobies are seen nesting just off the trail. The Galapagos Dove and very friendly Hood Mockingbird are commonly found in this area. The nearby bushes are frequently home to the large-cactus finch, warbler finch, small-ground finch and large-billed flycatcher. Continuing down the trail you come to the only place where waved albatross nest in the islands. Some 12,000 pairs nest on Española each year. The feeling is very dramatic and it seems like a desolate wilderness as the waves crash on the jagged cliffs below and the blowhole shoots water 50-70 feet/15-30 meters into the air. The sky above is full of sea birds including red-billed tropicbirds, American Oystercatchers, swallow-tailed gulls, and Audubon's Shearwaters.

 

Galapagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands (official name: Archipiélago de Colón; other Spanish names: Islas de Colón or Islas Galápagos) are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, some 900 km west of Ecuador. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site: wildlife is its most notable feature. Because of the only very recent arrival of man the majority of the wildlife has no fear of humans and will allow visitors to walk right up them, often having to step over Iguanas or Sea Lions.The Galápagos islands and its surrounding waters are part of a province, a national park, and a biological marine reserve. The principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of around 40,000, which is a 40-fold expansion in 50 years. The islands are geologically young and famed for their vast number of endemic species, which were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

This portrait of a miner was done underground at the depth of 400 meters in the oldest gold mine in the world - Berezovskaya Shakhta. Miner distracted from his work and delivered to the appointed location. item posing was minimized.

A tighter crop from the original (as suggested by "Synapped"). Taken during early afternoon. Lighting was from a north window to the left which spread soft illumination on the scene. Black foam board for the background and another black foam board to right to minimize unwanted bounce fill from a nearby wall. Vignette added using www.picnik.com via Flickr. Once the shot was made, my wife and I enjoyed devouring the props.

From the Ellicott City photo-shoot. I had seen pics of her from Otakon 2010 in this costume. Glad to have finally seen it in person as she did she did a helluva lot of work (check out the jesters' heads hanging from her neck piece. Nice!

 

Cosplayer: Ellie

 

UPDATE: Dust-Bunny's Harley was featured in Part 3 of Uproxx's It's "Harley Quinn Month." :-D

Urbex Benelux -

 

Gunpowder is very easily ignited by static electricity or lightning strikes, and most powder mills experienced occasional accidental explosions. Powder mill explosions typically destroyed an entire building and killed those working in the vicinity of the building. Explosions might throw flaming debris which could ignite other buildings. Successful mills were typically built as an arrangement of separate buildings to minimize the loss from any single building explosion. Buildings were separated by enough distance to minimize the risk of being damaged by an explosion in an adjacent building. Buildings were usually built of stone with one weak wooden wall and roof to direct the force and debris from an accidental explosion toward a river or an open field.