Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Tuesday 6 October 2020

Strange

It's not that long ago that, somehow, I'd never seen Fly Agaric. Whilst at Charnwood Lodge I found loads of fruiting bodies underneath the canopy of otherwise exposed trees ....




I also found an earthball in moss at the edge of a wooded area, which from the large diameter (c10mm) must be Scleroderma citrinum [Common Earthball].


I've had another play with some squeezed moss soup. I've managed to get some text and measurements from the camera software to merge onto the image, here's another testate amoeba with a 100micron line for scale.


I can't get the measurement data to transfer to the video clips yet though, so will probably need to dimension snaps to accompany them. Here's a rotifer of some sort (I think!) - look at the extent of the disturbance it's causing whilst 'hoovering' .... this is all happening within a merest veneer of soup under a cover-slip - it's ridiculous really.


Meanwhile, I have absolutely no idea what this weird thing is propelling itself around using cilia of some sort.


Believe it or not though, that's far from the strangest thing I've seen all day ...


I do like Isabella Rossellini, and I'm not at all surprised that sado-maschism excites her. There's a whole load of these on the 'Green Porno' Youtube channel, all equally weird yet informative.

5 comments:

martinf said...

Ah green porno, that's a blast from the past. In a previous job, I was working at a conservation conference in Buenos Aires and Isabella Rossellini turned up. She was promoting this project and we all sat there, watched and didn't quite know where to look. 2008 I think, happy days :)

Gibster said...

I tend to do a Google search of ciliates and just follow my nose when it comes to trying to figure out what I'm looking at. I've never taken it beyond genus, but I enjoy the detective work involved. Your rotifer vid is brilliant, look at that mastax chomping away!!! There are loads of different types of rotifer, but yours shows the two prongs like a V at the foot end, which immediately says "I'm a rotifer".

This may seem like a daft question, but it isn't. When you pan left,right, up or down, does the image move in the same direction - or does it head left when you pan right, up when you pan down etc?

Skev said...

Yes Martin, these clips from Isabella are great and weird in equal measure. Quite how they've passed me by for so long I have no idea.

Skev said...

Not a daft question Seth, I know what you mean. I'm still twiddling the control knobs the wrong way, can't get my head fixed on clockwise movibg the stage left/right up/down. Either way the stage physically moves in the opposite direction to what you see in the eyepieces. The camera body can be rotated, and either way the image can be flipped in the software so what I see on screen is the same as in the eyepieces.

Gibster said...

Ah ok, understood. Cheers bud!