Benweb 3.1

…at Fern Forest. I’ve been frantically trying to wrap up the loose ends here, because it looks like my office will be moving downtown, “with the neon lights so pretty,” but where nature will also be a lot more scarce than it is here way out west. So, before the move (if and when it occurs), I’m doing everything I can to soak up everything I can about my favorite spot.

As loyal readers will recall, I didn’t find any armadillos yesterday, but today I found three of them; the one below allowed me to get up nice and close:

Up close with army dillo

In fact, this little guy was fearless: not only was I able to get as close as I wanted to it, but I actually was able to touch it without eliciting so much as a grunt! Continue reading »

Some days you see a lot; others you don’t. Yesterday at Fern Forest I couldn’t go 100 yards without coming across another armadillo. Today, I didn’t see a one. But what I did see was a bit of a puzzle. Anyone out there have any idea what this might be? I found it at the beginning of the Maple Walk in a tangle of dead Brazilian Pepper trees:

Some places just feel old. Grab some tall trees, some worn stones, sprinkle in a few ferns, and add some creatures that look like dinosaurs, and you’ve got yourself a genuine lost world. And when it’s one of the most densely developed counties in Florida, well, that’s a real paradox. But that’s Fern Forest. Today really drove home how wild a place can be even when it’s smack in the heart of the city… Continue reading »

You don’t have to travel far to see some amazing things. Take this morning, for instance. Marcella and I had planned carefully to be able to be at Yamato Scrub early in the morning, so we could give Eric a nice stroll, check up on the Least Grebes, and see what else might be seen at our local natural area. Things don’t always work out as planned, however… Continue reading »

Tonight I discovered that the first actual images of an extrasolar planet have been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Which may sound strange to those of you who have been keeping up with news about our space telescope: it’s currently broken; a shuttle mission to repair it had been scheduled for last month, but was postponed when it was discovered that further repairs were needed. So how is it that the Advanced Camera for Surveys, the very instrument that isn’t working at the moment (and hasn’t been since 2007!), was able to capture these incredible images? Well, like most astronomical work, the observations were made quite some ago. It was the interpretation that took until just this week. From the NASA press release:

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut’s starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any intense astronomical observation, and I wasn’t even sure I’d remember my way around the sky, but tonight’s news inspired me to head out onto the back deck with Marcella’s binoculars and take a brief cruise around just to see what I could see. After all, at one point I could rattle off all the constellations visible from the northern hemisphere and give a list of their most prominent celestial objects. That knowledge can’t all have disappeared, can it? Is the intellectual pursuit of astronomy somewhat like riding a bike? Continue reading »

Last week I started taking the name of my lunchtime site more seriously, and started looking more closely at the various ferns of Fern Forest. My homework has revealed more and more parallels between birds and ferns, by the way. Did you know that there is an ancestral plant species with fern-like leaves called Archaeopteris? And of course THE ancestral bird species is Archaeopteryx. Coincidence? … I think…so, actually. (For more on the ancestral bird species, see Gary Kaiser, The Inner Bird.)

Seriously though, and as promised, I’m here to report on the results of my investigations at Fern Forest. Armed only with my Nikon P5100, my copy of Gil Nelson’s Ferns of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide, Doug Scofield’s website, and an all-too-brief lunch hour, I have successfully reinvented the wheel. That is, I have spent hours of personal investigation confirming what Gil and Doug have both written in plain English: the identifying characteristics of certain of the more abundant fern species are pretty plain. Once you understand how to see them. Continue reading »

We went to Yamato Scrub a couple of times this weekend; once very early on Saturday morning, and once again around sunset on Sunday. I just love the early morning light. Over the last year, this site really has become one of our favorite places to visit. Our first visit was back in November 2007, shortly after the place opened to the public. (Actually, all ERM lands are open to the public from dawn to dusk; it’s just that the trails and parking facilities had a grand opening back in the fall of 2007, and that’s what caught our attention about the site.)

It’s the closest spot to us where we can encounter nature in a nearly natural setting: we’ve had ospreys fly almost directly overhead, too close for our camera to catch the whole bird: Continue reading »

Taking care of an infant requires a lot of stamina. All those little things that one used to do before the arrival of one’s little bundle of joy take ever so much more effort now. Nap time has been severely curtailed, as has “regular” sleep time. Exercise time and lounging around time have simply disappeared. And as everyone knows, time is money. So, to maximize the return on our time investment, Benweb 3.1 is following the lead of countless corporate beancounters, and finding things to outsource. We all need to find fresh, innovative ways to maximize our resources during these troubled times; sinking all our creative effort into a nonrevenue medium like the web is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Therefore, Benweb 3.1 proudly announces our first strategic initiative: guest blogging (aka, outsourcing). Our first guest blogger appears below; some of you may already be familiar with him or his work: Continue reading »

I went back to Fern Forest yesterday, and very nearly enjoyed my stroll through the Maple Walk. I say very nearly, because the ladies of Fern Forest were out in force yesterday, and their constant attention, while flattering, made the walk much less comfortable than it would normally have been. And to top it all off, assimilating all this information about pteridophytes is a real challenge. As soon as I’ve got everything squared away, I’ll update you all.

Today was such a beautiful day that I just knew, even before I went in to work, that I would be going to the park for lunch. Fern Forest is my absolute favorite spot in Broward County to take lunch, because it has so many different trails, and each one has limitless opportunities for a curious naturalist around every corner.

Today, though, didn’t turn out as planned, because I decided to do some homework. Since fall migration is pretty much over in Florida, and I no longer need to stalk every tree and bush with binoculars, lately I’ve been thinking about, well, the same thing I’d thought about the last couple of times migration ended here: getting better acquainted with the plants that give the park its name; that is, the Ferns.

And in order to do so, before I left for the park today, I decided to delve into the introductory chapter of my Ferns of Florida field guide and reference, by Gil Nelson. What I discovered there was enough to make me postpone today’s trip until I’ve had a chance to absorb the lessons. Continue reading »