Sunday, June 22, 2014
Athena the Barn Owl

This week I made it over to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Although I was especially looking forward to the Butterflies Alive exhibit, on the way to the pavillion we bumped into this beautiful creature. (You may have noticed, she's not a butterfly!) This is Athena, a beautiful barn owl who was rescued after being hit by a car left her with limited eyesight. With limited depth perception she has trouble landing on perches and would not be able to catch food in the wild. Athena and her friends (a group of seven raptors, including Max a great horned owl and several falcons) were adopted by the Santa Barbara Autobon Society when it was determined for various reasons they could not be released back to the wild. You can learn more about them at their website http://www.eyesinthesky.org/ And you can meet them at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History most afternoons (check their online calendar for times... http://www.sbnature.org/ ).

Thursday, August 29, 2013
Iridescent Jelly

This amazing little creature is a Comb Jelly. The lights in rows on the side of his body are rows of tiny cilia (tiny movable hair like structures). But the light does not come from bioluminescence, the cilia are like tiny little prisms refracting the ambient light as the jelly waves the cilia to move through the water. The resulting wave of small rainbows is quite a show.