I D E A
love
dad
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Yard Friendly
B L U E J A Y
HOW DO YOU GET BLUE FROM A BROWN PIGMENT?
There is no blue pigment in nature. To make
a Blue Jay's feathers blue requires biologically
created microscopic structures that scatter the
sun's light, so that only the color blue is reflected
back to you. The same holds true for blueberries
and hydrangeas, anything living that looks blue.
The Jay is closely related to Crows and Magpies.
Clever birds all; known for problem solving.
Highly adaptable. It's true of every animal you see
making a living about your house. Each of the
animals featured here has its own way of dealing
with you.
A M E R I C A N T O A D
ONE OF THESE IN YOUR YARD RIDS YOUR HOME OF INSECT PESTS.
Each day they swallow about a thousand creepy crawlers
that would like to surprise you and run out from hiding in
your cupboard. And you have guests... over for dinner.
You don't have these problems with Mr. Toad.
Of course, this could easily be the misses.
I can't tell them apart.
You could stuff a lizard in that big mouth.
The thick, gnarly bumped skin slows water evaporation.
Frogs need to be near ponds. All this toad needs
is a log or rock, someplace dark and cool to hide under
during the day. But the toad is an amphibian.
It's eggs have no protective shell, and they must
be laid in standing water or they quickly dry out.
Reptiles lay eggs with shells and they have
no such constraint.
G R A Y S Q U I R R E L
AND YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE VEGAN.
What turns a park squirrel into a murderous carnivore?
Opportunity. A dead bird. A nest of eggs or young ones
momentarily left unguarded. There is no nut and seed
diet that provides the surge in protein, fat and calcium
that animal flesh delivers. Here is the needed
pick me up if you are a pregnant or nursing squirrel.
Have a sudden urge to bite the head off of a baby chick?
Don't worry about it. It's instinct,
and comes with a rational explanation.
B R O W N - H E A D E D C O W B I R D
A YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER FEEDS A SPIDER TO 'BABY'.
The cowbird looks like a black bird with a brown head.
They don't make nests. Cowbirds drop their egg in
the nests of unsuspecting birds because they haven't
the time to raise kids.
For thousands of years the cowbird had made a
good living following the buffalo about as it stirs
insects from the prairie grass. Day after day the
scenery always changed because these large
bison herds were nomadic. If you wanted to make
a living off the buffalo you couldn't take time to build
nests and raise the nestlings.
Most birds take an hour or more to lay one egg.
A cowbird delivers its egg in under forty seconds.
Get in and get out quickly without being seen.
The cowbird young are precocious. They hatch
sooner and grow more quickly than their nest mates.
Consequently they monopolize the food and
push their competitors from the nest.
Is there no justice for the wronged?
E U R O P E A N S T A R L I N G
A CRAZY HIGH METABOLIC RATE REQUIRES INNOVATIVE RESPIRATION.
A bird's airflow system is not like the bellows that are a
mammal's lungs, tidal - first drawing oxygen in then push
out carbon dioxide. An avian respiration has a one way flow
of air, much like that of a wind tunnel. The beauty here is
that even when the animal is exhaling, it is also drawing in
oxygen at the same time, supercharging the metabolism.
The body's intense burning of calories generates a
dangerous amount of heat. Once again, this respiratory
approach provides the solution by efficiently drawing
heat from the body, along side the CO2.
When it comes to flight, birds are jets and mammals
strictly piston engines.
O P O S S U M
HER JOY FROM HEAVEN.
Nocturnal. Highly nomadic. Moving always from
den to den. They are marsupials. Their embryonic
young migrate to a pouch, where they develop into
something survivable.
Possums are surprisingly good climbers. They also
have a high immunity to snake venom. Here's the
problem. Possums prowl for insects, snails, rodents
and the like at night. They have poor vision. They
rustle through leaves where copperhead rattlers like
to rest. Bingo. They get bit, with enough toxin to
quickly kill an animal this size. But the possum
has natural immunity. It may well go on and
eat the snake.
Possums do play dead.
Under extreme stress they involuntarily fall into
a comatose state. To heighten the intensity of the
moment, the possum also releases a death-like odor
to further discourage a predator from making
it a meal.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Saturday, March 7, 2026
Curious Neighbors
B R O W N B U L L H E A D C A T F I S H
F I S H
Bottom dweller.
Thrives off dead animals drifting to the murky
bottom of lakes and rivers. Here the waters
are so thick with silt, mud and debris that one's
eyes are useless. To compensate the catfish
has a great sense of smell that guides them to
their meal, and tenacles around their mouth
allowing them to feel about the muck to find
their food.
R E D S A L A M A N D E R
A M P H I B I A N
Lungless. They breath through their skin.
Very inefficient method of getting oxygen
to the animal's cells deep inside. Relying
on the passive diffusion of gas drastically
limits the size of an animal. The salamander
pictured here is no more than five inches long.
It fits comfortably in the palm of your hand.
Here's a biological engineering problem
common to both salamanders and lizards.
Their legs stick out of their side instead of
underneath. Consequently, they are constantly
dragging their belly over the ground everywhere
they go.
Imagine horses running the Preakness
with their legs like oars sticking out the side
of a boat. You might as well saddle up
on a potted plant.
A L L I G A T O R S N A P P I N G T U R T L E
R E P T I L E
Comes from a tough neighborhood.
This guy is armored head to tail and
has a bite that will amputate your foot.
It rules over lakes and streams, wherever
it lives. What could possibly threaten this
reptile armed with a bone-crushing beak?
Probably another snapping turtle...
one that wants your territory, figuring
you're too old to defend what's yours.
You are.
Soon you become just another item on
a catfish's menu.
P I L E A T E D W O O D P E C K E R
B I R D
Banging your head against the wall is hard
on the brain. If you've heard a woodpecker
doing their job you know they bang their head
several times a second. Just a couple of those
hits would put an NFL quarterback in concussion
protocol.
In the real world of cause and effect you already
know there must be an engineering solution
to prevent constant bruising of the brain.
There is such a fix but it's only temporary.
After a couple of years of being just a
woodpecker you're pretty used up.
Senility sets in. You begin wondering
which end is up?
Does it ever really matter?
You just couldn't stop banging your head.
B I G B R O W N B A T
M A M M A L
Flying mice.
A mammal with wings.
The bones of the front legs are elongated
into a skeletal structure covered in a membrane
that replaces a bird's feathers for providing lift.
Bats fly at night using their echoes
for navigating around obstacles and
directing them toward their prey.
Sight guides a bird's flight.
An owl's eyes can maneuver through darkness
but who else ventures into the night except
to migrate across a sea of water?
Bats rule the night with their dog paddle
flight skills because they don't have to compete
with a bird's skillful acrobatics.
.
Like the salamanders, a bat's engineering
was built atop a foundation that wasn't
designed for the purpose of flight.
For instance, the lungs of a bat reflects
those used by ancient four-legged mammals.
The mammal breathes in oxygen, then
exhales carbon dioxide. It spends only half
its time retrieving oxygen whereas a bird's
breathing doesn't need time to exhale.
Their oxygen intake is uninterrupted.
The bird's performance is turbocharged
by this boost in energy efficiency.
How did this advance in respiration
come about?
N I N E - B A N D E D A R M A D I L L O
M A M M A L
Armored against coyotes and bobcats,
not so much protection against bears
and mountain lions. Your best bet
to survive as an armadillo is to avoid
being seen.
Have your meals at night, limiting
your search for grubs and insects
to after dark. Generally this precaution
works out and maybe you live long
enough to raise a family.
Eventually, though, your luck runs out
and you become some predator's meal.
All those vital nutrients that made you, you,
now inhabit another of Nature's creatures
who's first act is to take a nap after its
meal of you.
Once your predator revives it runs and
snoops about, schemes and plots and
looks for a mate before it too, eventually
succumbs to something lethal.
The nutrients that once were a part of you
and then that other guy, now inhabit the nutrient
cycle of another living home, insuring this
Earth-bound process continues.
Existing in Nature.
Food for thought.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Saturday, February 28, 2026
Audubon
G R E A T H O R N E D O W L
Feather tufts like ears are for display.
The bird has claws with a grip powerful
enough to sever the spine of their prey,
be it rodent, skunk or geese. Specialized
serrations on their flight feathers give these
nocturnal hunters a deadly stealth flight.
Great Horned Owls are widely found,
living in desert and forest. They also
make a good living off of park squirrels,
who were just hanging out in the
center of town.
B A L T I M O R E O R I O L E
These woodland song birds breed in summer
and migrate to Central and South America for
the winter. They eat both insects and fruit, as
well as nectar and bird-loving grape jelly. Their
hanging sock nests are weaved from plant fibers,
string and the mangled hair you couldn't do
a thing with.
They are Maryland's state bird and mascot
for Baltimore's baseball team.
G R E A T B L U E H E R O N
Standing four feet tall and having a wingspan
of nearly seven feet, the Blue Heron is the
largest waterbird found in North America.
Herons weigh no more than seven pounds
despite their size because of the hollow
bone structure, common to all birds of flight.
Specialized neck vertebrae gives them
blazing speed when striking for their prey.
They eat most any animal they can swallow
whole... fish, frogs, lizards, insects, gophers,
other birds. They build their stick nests bunched
together atop high trees that thrive in salt and
freshwater wetlands.
C O M M O N C O R M O R A N T
These are large diving birds are found in lakes,
rivers, estuaries and coastal waters most anywhere
on the globe except the polar caps.
They don't walk, not even like a penguin.
They land on tree limbs and power lines and
take their naps on narrow ledges found on
the face of cliffs.
They spread their wings to dry their flight feathers,
which are not fully waterproof. That seems a
surprising shortcoming for an aquatic bird,
but it works. Their wings are what they are
because their makeup gives the cormorant
an advantage at diving and their pursuit
of small fish.
C A R O L I N A P A R A K E E T
A highly social, boisterous parrot that flocked
together by the hundreds. They were the only
parrots native to the United States having
what it took to endure cold weather.
They fed on the poisonous seeds of the Cocklebur
which made this parrot possibly toxic to its
predators. Still this bird is extinct. It's colorful
feathers provided plumage for hats and fashion accents.
Farmers considered them an agricultural pest and
took every opportunity to kill them by the hundreds.
Today they are a prime candidate for extinction
reversal. Their genetic information has been extracted
from museum samples and successfully sequenced.
This species may one day be revived from some lab
petri dish.
C A L I F O R N I A C O N D O R
With a wingspan of nearly ten feet and weighing
in at an amazing twenty-five pounds this vulture
is the largest land bird in North America. They
are also among the longest living birds at sixty
years. Using wind and updrafts the condor can
cover 250 miles in a day, hunting for dead deer,
cattle or beached mammal to devour.
In 1982 the California Condor's numbers had
dwindled to near extinction, with only 22 individuals
left in the wild. These individuals were captured
in a first step to repopulate the region with birds
that were hatched from an intensive captive
breeding program.
As of 2022 the Condor population has grown to over
500 birds, with 347 having been reintroduced into
the wild. Still, the initial reasons for the declining
population in the wild remain.
J O H N J A M E S A U D U B O N
1 7 8 5 - 1 8 5 1
Audubon was a self taught artist and naturalist.
His book, The Birds of America, with its 435
hand colored prints, was a seminal publication
in the study of birds. His original illustrations
were life size, painted from fresh killed specimens.
They were first wired into the pose he desired
to illustrate. An animal too big to fit on the paper
used in his illustrations would then be contorted
to an unnatural degree to make the image fit.
Life size was all important.
Audubon was an historic conservationist
and a notable proponent of slavery
in the years leading up to the
American Civil War.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, February 22, 2026
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