Things that metamorphose in the night

Day Two, continued. After the xiphactinus and before the pachycephalasaurus, I spent a little time in the balmy Butterfly Hall at the Academy. I found a nice little bench out of the main traffic flow through the exhibit (an important consideration when drawing in places where hordes of children and clueless adults could stream past at any moment) and settled down to draw.

Lots of nice, colorful wings flitting here and there. A lovely morpho on the other side of the room. Graphic shapes, bold colors. Just the sort of thing I like to draw. What settled next to me? Brown and subtle owl butterfly, of course.

At some point the morpho came across the room, and literally bopped me in the back of the head. (Some might say dope-slapped.) Did it settle? Of course not.

Later I moved to another bench, after stopping for a visit with the little poison dart frogs. Again, what settled nearby? Subtlety. Again, what bopped me in the back of the head? Morpho. The butterfly equivalent of taunting, I am sure. (Either that, or its favorite nectar bar was serving really fermented brew.)

Still, it was nice to have a little taste of summer in the far-from-it early days of March. I think I'll go hunting for green blades of grass this afternoon, just to convince myself the season's on its way.

Just let this one get away...

Day Two of the Great Eastern Expedition.

After Darwin's finches and after I finally appeased my blood sugar level on the first day, we were fortunate to have a chance to visit with Dr. Ruth Patrick, now 99 years young and still coming in to work at the Academy of Natural Sciences. The local paper recently called her the "Den Mother of Ecology," but I'm still not sure I feel comfortable with such a title for the first person to develop a model using diatoms to measure water pollution. And she was an upstart woman, to boot.

The next day I was twitchy to get around to other parts of the Academy... a great place to visit if you're ever in the 'hood. The "Scoop on Poop" exhibit was a must-see (dung beetles to homo saps) of course, although I must say I'm glad I witnessed it without a horde of school kids along. I walked past later when the hall was occupied by mini-mites and it was QUITE vociferous in there.

The Academy has a nice live butterfly exhibit, but first I felt a need to visit an old friend in the dinosaur hall. Not a splashy T. rex or stego... but a non-dino fish. I love this critter for its ferocious aspect, even as bone remnants. And because I just can't figure out precisely what it ever did with those protrusions other than make prehistoric orthodontists see dollar signs.

The Xiphactinus audax was a large predatory bony fish that lived in the shallow prehistoric sea that once covered what is now the central United States. (This makes it possibly a beast of my home turf, although I don't know enough about local prehistoric natives to say for certain.) The name Xiphactinus means "Sword Ray," an apparent homage to its pectoral fins.

Xiphactinus audax is believed to have grown to a length of 18 - 20 feet. Its "fangs" were as much as 2" long. (This one was nearly that big.) It was discovered in 1870 by Joseph Leidy who christened it from a pectoral spine fragment he discovered in the Smoky Hill Chalk of Kansas. Xiphactinus probably looked like an overgrown tarpon, except for the fact of those lovely protruding spikes on its mouth. A face only the mother of all bone fish could love. Or some goofy pencil-wielding itinerant artist from the west.

Honey, I'm home!

Email and phone message triage accomplished, suitcase excavated, laundry begun... I must be home at last. Yesterday was a blur of planes, trains, and automobiles. Somewhere today I misplaced my jacket. I must be warm again.

So. The first of the promised adventures of the journey: a little time with Darwin's finches at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. It was probably NOT the best idea to tackle these things fresh off the boat from Colorado, before I had a working rhythm or even thawed out fingers... but tackle them I did. Denis, of course, did a stunning piece of western meadowlarks collected by John James Audubon on his Missouri River expedition. Nice yellows, big bold stripes and spots. Me? I chose a tray of unassuming brown and gray birds. Subtlety not being one of my stronger suits, I spent a lot of time muttering to myself. But I waded through it anyway.


For starters, a little pencil sketch. From top to bottom: Certhidea olivacea, collected 1897; a critter about which I am now perplexed, marked C. salvini ridgio and collected 1901; and male and female Platyspiza crassirostris, collected in 1937.

I did a color version, too... but it didn't have the character of this little sketch. Weaker composition, for one thing. Too close to lunch and I was hungry, for another.

While we were working, the ornithology curator was also at work, quietly showing a young woman the technique for creating study skins. It was nice to listen to them... Nate was a patient teacher and Ashley an engaged high school senior. Outside the wind howled and the cold was bitter, but inside we were a cozy scene of concentration and bird-geeky camaraderie. In all, a nice way to spend a morning.