The biggest environmental news is about the Pebble Mine in Alaska.
Many people are interested in raising solitary bees and wasps, not for the honey, but to enhance the pollination of native plants. Early winter is a good time to start learning how to attract solitary bees and this website is a good place to start. It has great basic and practical information on both honey bees and cavity-nesting (solitary) bees. I've included three links to help you get started so you'll be prepared when spring arrives.
It's time to collect stems for bees.
The best mason bee straws ever!
An emergence box for your over-wintering bees.
Surplus and stress control autumn timing of leaf drop.
Increased growing-season productivity drives earlier autumn leaf senescence in temperate trees
Is it a bird? Is it a bee? No, it's a lizard pollinating South Africa's 'hidden flower'. How a chance encounter with a 'weird plant' in the Drakensberg mountains led to a startling discovery
Video and Article.
Can't hurry love: slow worms embrace marathon sessions of lockdown loving. In the UK "Slow worm" is the common name for a legless lizard. Georgia has several species of legless lizards.
Los Angeles is abuzz with insect discoveries - in pictures.
Since 2014, entomologists have sampled millions of insects around the city, identifying 800 species, including 47 new to science. The most striking miniature inhabitants are showcased in photographs taken using a special digital microscope in an online exhibition called Spiky, Hairy, Shiny: Insects of LA.
Look up, look down: experts urge us to take a closer look at the concrete jungle. Plants, birds, moths and bugs are all waiting to be noticed and appreciated - and photographed
The Guardian has as series of posts in their "Wild Cities" subject, some of which I've linked to above. Here's the subject link.
Here's the link to the "Age of Extinction" series from the Guardian.
Super rare deep sea squid spotted in Australian waters for the first time. The Bigfin squid is the size of a hotdog bun, but with tentacles up to 7 meters long.
The story of Snowball Earth. Ancient rocks suggest that ice entirely covered our planet on at least two occasions. This theory may help explain the rise of complex life that followed.
The origin of mud. For most of Earth's history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever.
Bent into shape: The rules of tree form.
How do trees find their sense of direction as they grow? Researchers are getting to the root - and the branches - of how the grandest of plants develop.
The silence of the owls. No one knows exactly how the nocturnal hunters manage their whisper-soft flight, yet it is inspiring the design of quieter airplanes, fans and wind turbines
The life that springs from dead leaves in streams.
A crunchy brown leaf may seem like an ending. But the food webs it supplies can be far more expansive than the ones it nourished when it was young, green and in its prime.
How snowflakes grow. The cold, finicky science of ice crystal formation
The following links are from the Mushroom Club of Georgia:
For your Reading enjoyment:
Forest fungi survive wildfires by hiding inside plants.
Vegan leather made from mushrooms.
Why the 2020 foraging season was a bust.
