cool new project: Wildlife Watch by NWF

Campsis radicans (trumpet creeper) observed in Astoria, Queens, July of 2007.

A few months back I received an email from a woman at the National Wildlife Federation who was interested in some of my botanical photos. She told me about a project of theirs called Wildlife Watch. After checking it out I ended up letting them use the photograph of trumpet creeper I took here in the 'hood a couple years ago. I'm glad they liked it as I like this shot a lot myself, with the cluster of long, red hummingbird-pollinated flowers looking so natural and popping out in front of the man/mass-produced siding and windows.

Anyway, check out Wildlife Watch, a valiant attempt by some great folks at identifying different species around the country. In addition to awesome flora and fauna mapped really well there are many great photos and photographers represented and I am eager to see how it grows. I just got totally roped into some amazing bird photographs on flickr, complete with proper nomenclature - who knew!?!?

While we are on the topic, in 2007 I went to a celebration of Carl Linnaeus' birthday at The New York Public Library, complete with genius scientists and Linnaeus own copy of Systema Naturae, the work that would eventually catch the world on to binomial nomenclature. Binomial nomenclature is the system scientists use to classify all living things, originally developed by the Bauhin brothers but later popularized among scientists by Linnaeus. It's the use of specific Latin names and terminology to delineate from kingdom all the way down to genus and species, the way a pin oak tree is Quercus palustris and a red-tailed hawk is Buteo jamaicensis. At this celebration and book viewing I was introduced to the Encyclopedia of Life, an attempt at databasing all living species on planet earth. A bold goal and formidable challenge still in the early stages it too is worth checking out. The last neat link I will leave you with is for ARKive.org, a database of endangered species. I just checked that out for the first time and want to check it out a lot more, as it seems to have a lot of amazing images and is also wonderfully specific and factual. Happy geeking out fellow natural science buffs!

On a technical note, new computer is in the works so full arborboy image capabilities should be up and running in another couple weeks or so.