(Downtown Plainfield IL, July 19, 2009)
I don’t know if the three ladies were just looking at the girl, or if they were glaring at me because I was looking at the girl.
Either way, I bet the commentary would have been pretty entertaining to hear!
Photography
Bees
This past weekend we had an unusual warm spell. The bees were taking advantage of the nice weather, but couldn’t find any flowers. Luckily for them, I’m fundamentally lazy and still hadn’t taken down my hummingbird feeder. Apparently they were able to reach the sugar water!
Update: the following weekend had similar weather, and I got some much better photos:
Crinoid!
I had the good fortune a few weekends ago to be invited on a fossil gathering outing in Dixon IL. The quarry we were in was just loaded with fossils – you pretty much couldn’t turn around without finding something.
This is a close-up photo of one of my favorite specimens. A crinoid crown, about 45mm in length. The imaged was Photoshopped a bit to make the fossil stand out. In the lower right corner, somewhat out of focus, you can make out a smaller version of the same sort of critter.
Update – the gentleman who took me along on this outing has provided me with the specific details of this fossil:
- Cupulocrinus gracilis
- Phylum: Echinoderma
- Class: Crinoidea
- Location: Dixon, IL
- Period: Ordovician
- Group: Platteville
- Formation: Mifflin
About the only piece of that information I could have worked out on my own was the location, and that’s only because I managed to stay awake long enough on that very early Sunday morning to see the welcome sign as we passed through town 🙂
Now I have to go figure out what that other stuff means. Ordovician, for starters, means this little fellow is 443 to 490 million years old. How cool is that?