189: Fungus II

So this one is a bit more colorful than the previous one. We were all convinced that the brighter the colour, the more poisonous they would be

There is a place here where you can take mushrooms and they will identify them for you. I think I may look them up and see if they accept pictures. I'd be curious to know what kind these are

188: Fungus I

So this weekend, my dad and his wife came up to the country with us. We were fortunate to have spectacular weather, and we took a hike to a nice view point yesterday.

Because we've had such a wet spring, we saw a pretty neat assortment of fungi. This 'shroom was the most mundane of the bunch...

187: Lwamunda Eggs

I've been volunteer- ing in a biology lab this summer at McGill, and it's been a lot of fun. The people working in the lab are great fun, incredibly helpful, and I've been learning lots of stuff!

When I decided to go back to school, I was sure I wasn't going to enjoy the lab part. I had visions of those sterile labs with terrible lighting that you see on television, with everyone working in utter silence and never talking to each other. I am (happily) completely wrong! I'm sure those labs exist somewhere, but the one I'm volunteering in is great!

I'm helping a grad student with her research right now. She's studying the effects of oxygen gradients on the breeding habits of fish. This is the oversimplyfied version! I'm weighing each egg from each brood, photographing them, and then using a computer program to measure dimensions and calculate volume. This is one of the photographs I've taken.

Cool stuff!!

186: Flower

A friend of mine planted some climbing vines in the country, and when I last went up, he asked how they were doing. One of the had flowered, so I snapped a shot to preserve in case none of the others flowered.

Here you go, Joel!

185: Another New Friend

I don't know how my grass- hopper friend will get along with this friend though...

184: My New Friend

This is my new friend.

183: Bzzzzzzz

So this buzzer was happy as a clam in all the flowers a friend of ours planted earlier this spring (Thanks Lianne!)

However, I have no idea what it is. It's got a huge probiscis though, the kind that curls. Any idea what this is?

It's also big! Seemed to be almost twice the body length of a honey bee!

It was nice to be back out in the country again. What wasn't nice was that the blackflies are still around since it's been such a soggy spring and summer