Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Odds and Ends

Églantine had some wonderful bird photos that I was going to put on the blog this morning but other items came up that I wanted to share so the birds will have to wait until tomorrow.

In the order that they came to my attention, here are three odds and ends that you may find of interest.

First, Linda of the Linda's Backroad Musings blog had an entry about memories of going to a one room country school which brought back my own memories of a similar school. Have a look at her blog. If you have similar memories, it might be interesting to add them to her comments and make a link to them from your blog. Just a thought . . .

Second, We will probably have to relearn the planet names as several may be added to the list later this month. See the Space Weather site for August 16, 2006 for the quick version of the news or the Official IAU Press Release for more technical information.

Last, but not least, I recieved through the mail from Amazon.ca this morning the absolute best, best insect information book that I have ever seen!



It is 718 pages of wonderful photos and excellent information about insects of eastern North America. It costs a lot of money! That being said, I do not regret for a second the money that I paid for it. OK, here's a bit more information; it is just over 3 kilograms (around 7 pounds) and 22 x 29 cm (8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches) so it's not a book to take out in the field. It cost me, after taxes $66.46 in Canadian dollars (Listed as $95 in both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com and offered for $62.70 Cnd or $59.85 U.S).

If you are from the east, (or not), are interested in insects plus some spiders, etc., and have the money, I highly recommend it! It is in the first printing of 2006 so it is hot off the press.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like a good book - you may have just solved my problem of what to get Treebeard for Christmas :)

threecollie said...

If the book makes insect identification easier I think it would be well worth the price. It is so frustrating, to me at least, no insect expert, to see some facinating bug and not even know enough to be able to look it up with the resources available.
Great photos of the night heron!

Ontario Wanderer said...

Swamp, I am sure he would enjoy it if he likes insects at all.

Threecollie, No insect book will get every insect but this one will get you at least to the family and probably the genus level and the most common species are here too. Meanwhile, there are a few million other insects still waiting to be found and named.

Anonymous said...

That book is cheap! Can you take a few photos inside? I'm thinking of buying something similar, if not the same one.

I'd like to see what info it gives on different groups of insects.