Giant tortoises are native here, as are burrowing owls, roadrunners, various hummingbirds, coyotes, and jackrabbits (who have destroyed my lawn). Given what time of year it is there are migratory geese who flock through town in great number.

Oh. And chupacabre. They're all over these parts.

Haha you almost got me there, I know what roadrunners is a reference for > <.

@mindshadow: that's a zoo of some kind right?
owls always look so smug don't they

nice butterfly photos, we have monach butterflies here too but not the others
we do have puriri moths though, they are the size of a mouse with wings [heavy too]
http://nzacfactsheets.landcareresearch.co.nz/factsheet/OrganismProfile/Puriri_moth_-_Aenetus_virescens.html

they tend to like gas stations at night, we just get hundreds of them everywhere, uggh.

I was in Santa Cruz, California once and I saw a fucking CLOUD of monarch butterfiles. I only wish I had a camera with me, it was probably the fucking WIERDEST thing I've ever experienced, and I've seen a lot of wierd stuff in my old age. Calling it a "swarm" wouldnt do it justice either. It was like a vast cloud of large flying orange and black butterflies- I mean, they had landed on this grove of those Australian trees that grow on the Califrornia coast, and these big ass butterflies just literally covered every single trunk, leaf, and branch of those eucalyptus trees. They littered the ground as well, and when you looked up towards the sky, all you saw was this glittering orange cloud. Like I said, I wish I had a camera with me; it was the most bizarre shit I've ever seen. I guess it was some kind of wierd migration.

they'd need a LOT of swan plants.

It's a wild life park, the animals have quite large areas and all look very healthy. There are lots of owls here and some of the tame animals are free to wander amongst people, like the deer and wallabies.

That owl has an amazing expression

That sounds amazing!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_bu ... #Migration

Saint Malo and Saint Michel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Malo



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Saint-Michel

I spoiler-tagged your uber-large pics. Next time please have the common sense to do this yourself. I have a very large high-res monitor and it still stretched my screen majorly!

Also, while kinda cool these are not very fitting for this thread, as they show man-made objects and people, not nature.

I was trying to do it right now, thanks. I used to host my images on Fotki but it's now closed and that's why I have problems.
I posted those here cause I understand those like landscape photos and because they are quite special and rare places related with nature (sea and mountain near the sea).
Sorry.

On friday my boss wanted me to do a job on this small island, with population of about 250 people. I got the job done in abouth one hour, so I had to wait 4 hours for the next boat back to the mainland. So I got some time for photos:

holy crap, are they oil rigs and windmills?! they're huge, and fuck up the landscape dramatically
did anyone else think there were two big kick drums mounted up in the air ha ha

not a very good quality image, taken with my phone, but this is the biggest cargo ship i've ever seen berthed/moored/parked at downtown auckland recently

We have a few of those here too

We saw this iceberg on a cruise in Alaska. Man, it was huge.


The ship stopped at a port, I don't remember which one. We exited the ship to look around the town. There were some stands offering activities, and dog sledding was one of them. This picture showed where the dogs would rest.

Nice photos but that seems more like the tongue of a glacier, no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier

that's what i thought too maybe they saw a big iceberg that broke away from that [pictured] glacier?

Perhaps. Now that I think about it, it must have been. It was the only one we passed by, though. We traveled through open water for most of the trip.

Just a few pictures from my trip to Austria and Germany last summer. I'm no photographer so don't hate And excuse the picture quality, they were taken on my iPhone.

This one is on the border between the two countries, on top of a mountain. I forget which side it was taken on. It's just a sign and some trees. It means "border" in English


These three were taken on top of a mountain in Austria, near St. Wulfgang's. I forget the name of the mountain.







This was taken as we drove through the Alps into Austria:

wicked scenery there! quite good photos too i thought.

Wow, those pictures are amazing. It reminds me of Sequim, Washington during the dry season.

Some old photos I forgot about.

Here's a couple more from a drive today:




It was so hot today driving around that my phone kept giving me an error message saying it was too hot and shut itself down...

mcmufffins: Great photos! Looks very nice there.

Good ones in the last two post to, love the desolate road photo!


Some new ones from the woods here:

Cynips douglasii (aka Antron douglasii) on Quercus lobata (Valley oak) with a spider egg sac and green lacewing egg (Chrysopidae).


Bolbitius lacteus


Conocybe apala (Or maybe C. albipes is a better name for North American material, idk...)


Hatched leaf-footed bug eggs (Coreidae) on Callistemon (Bottlebrush)


Parasola schroeteri


Psathyrella hymenocephala


Andricus fullawayi on Quercus lobata

how do you know the latin names for those things or even what they are? i bet you have letters after your name on your business card, right?

I want to move to Norway, it's to serene there!

Too bad i'm a wimp in the cold though...

Where I live looks like Africa, no pics worth taking.

yeah but you see it all the time, we might like it

Africa is cool




Wow

I actually haven't even been to college...Californian gall wasps are pretty easy if you can figure out the host thanks to the efforts of people like Joyce Gross and for the mushrooms I used Flora Agaricina Neerlandica vol 6 except for the Psathyrella which I used North American Species of Psathyrella, microscopy was needed for all. The leaf-footed bug eggs were identified by someone else at bugguide.net, I had no idea what I was looking at.

Some more...

First two are ''taken at work'' photos^^
The rest are from around my home.

These were taken today at late afternoon, when my son and I went for a walk at a wetlands/mangrove forest area not fifteen minutes from our home, called Ash Island. The late afternoon light made for some interesting shots; especially within the mangrove forests (which are really cool things people), and there is some more black and white experimentation. Hope you enjoy more of the unique Aussie scenery























The orange spots in this shot are actually sunlight:











Here is a native black swan, with her clutch of cygnets:

Nice photos of the trees CrushedR, I was hoping you and Dreadmeat would post some from your neck of the woods.
Any crocs, funnel web spiders, Kaola bears, Tiger snakes (any snakes), baobabs, blue ring Octopus, box jellyfish, stonefish, sharks, to show us?

Crocs in the wild are about a day and a half drive north of me (thank the gods), but I might be able to grab a pic of some sharks and blue-ringed octopus if I'm (un)lucky. Funnel web spiders are around where I'm at though, but it's rare sight to actually see one (again thankfully).

Thanks, but stick with trees they're safer!

Something a bit different - rural Afghanistan. As you can see, the difference between the irrigated "green zone" and the desert is pretty noticible. The mud-brick buildings in the second photo are typical in Afghanistan.

Wow, there really isn't much difference in landscape between Afghanistan and the Mojave Desert. I'm sure it's a hell of a lot hotter over there though.


Tomorrow after class I'm going on another drive so I'll grab a few more pics. I meant to go out backpacking this weekend but it's far too hot

i laughed at this, we don't have any of those things here really apart from the odd jellyfish or shark
in australia they call sheep, dear...

at the moment i have 3 flickr sets of scenery stuff if you'd like to take a squizz
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzMx3Hj
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzNYMjh
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAs2p77

NB: the two chimneys you may see are only the corpse incinerators at the two hospitals, not hideous factories.
corpse incinerator would make a sweet band name, it's available too.

Afghanistan looks hot



That's good to know
Thanks for sharing the pics, they're very clear (good camera), it's interesting seeing other places.

I was a little curious so I looked it up, seems the mojave is pretty damn hot... Around some parts of death valley the temps are supposed to frequently pass 49 °C (120°F) and even get over 54°C (130°F) while Afghanistan reaches around 35°C (95°F) in the hotter parts and Jalalabad has an record of 49°C (120°F).

whaddyaknow.

Man, I was offered a job at the power plant nearby my father works at but I turned it down because one, it gets to 140 inside the plant, and two I'd have to drop out.