Spiny Orb-weaver Spider - Gasteracantha clavigera
I ran into some old images in my hard drive and found this photo of an odd-looking spider I took way back in 2005!
A quick scan on Araneae species brought me to ID this spider as Gasteracantha clavigera. A species in the spiny orb-weaver genus
2007.12.14 Manila, Philippines
It's a Bird! The Philippine Duck - Anas luzonica - Hunted and Killed
The Philippine Duck is a gentle and shy Philippine endemic bird. Just like the Philippine Eagle, it can only be found here in the Philippines. The natural geographic and biological evolution that slowly took place upon millions of years which made this species unique to the Philippines is of such great value. Personally, I consider these birds a national treasure.
Of all the birding trips CJ David made, he hasn't been lucky to spot one to observe and photograph yet. However, these birds are easier to find for some people as I found alarming photos of dead Philippine ducks when friends of mine, a biologist, a birder, and a journalist, all told me separately of this online petition by this gentleman from Negros island named Josef Sagemuller to stop the massacre of our endemic birds!
This is one of the photos I found at the petition site which came from the Web site of the hunters. More disturbing photos of dead birds can be found at the petition site.
Our Philippine Duck is not just endemic. It's in the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red list of Threatened Species classified as VU = vulnerable . With an estimated remaining population of less than 10,000.
Our Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, written to conserve and protect wildlife species and their habitats to promote ecological balance and enhance biological diversity, states that the killing of wildlife is illegal.
I hope this killing will stop soon. I want to see these ducks alive, not dead as an extinct stuffed animal in a museum nor as a hunting game. I'd rather shoot toy ducks at the carnival but then again, maybe not.
Thanks to fellow birder and photographer Romy Ocon for sharing his photo of a flying Philippine Duck above, also posted at his blog - http://romyocon.blogspot.com. More bird photos of Romy Ocon can be found in his photo gallery - http://www.pbase.com/liquidstone/.
>The "STOP THIS PHILIPPINE ENDEMIC BIRD MASSACRE !!!" Petition Site
>The IUCN Red List - Philippine duck
>The Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act of the Philippines
CJ David went on an online adventure at GalaxyZoo and found these interesting photographs of a barred spiral galaxy, an irregular spiral galaxy, and two merging spiral galaxies while classifying galaxies and looking at the galleries.
Look at the photo with two merging galaxies: What if our very own Milky Way galaxy start to merge or collide with the Andromeda galaxy? Well, the two are actually on a collision course but it won't happen in 3 billion years as estimated by astronomers.
Anyway, looking at these glorious galaxies that no-one has ever laid eyes on before and help out in their discovery is definitely interesting and fun. And getting a sense of the diversity of galaxies and the vastness of the universe is mind-boggling.
GalaxyZoo is a project composed of astronomers from the University of Oxford, the University of Portsmouth and Johns Hopkins University (USA), and Fingerprint Digital Media of Belfast, which harnesses the power of the Internet - and our brain - to classify a million galaxies.
This project was said to be inspired by the Stardust@home project which began August of 2006, in which NASA invited the public to sort through, using a virtual telescope, dust grains obtained by spacecraft mission to Comet Wild-2. This also reminds me of the Seti@home, a distributed computing project which was opened to Netizens in mid-1999 to help Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence by analysing radio telescope data using the processing powers of computers that are connected to the Internet.
GalaxyZoo needs human volunteers because the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can. Especially patterns that are unusual, the weird and the wonderful. So join in!
Images for personal and educational use courtesy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
2005.09.29-30 San Fernando La Union, Philippines.
2004.08.21 Taguig City, Metro Manila, Philippines
So I, CJ David, and me went on an introductory birding trip with Mike Lu, the President of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines along with my sister at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, in Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila.
I saw a number of birds I never thought existed and can be observed here in Manila.
In this photo is a Pied Triller (Lalage Nigra) a resident of the Philippines, 165mm in length, common in trees and open country, gardens in towns, and open scrub, singly or in pairs, in the lowlands.
2005.02.12 Puerto Galera, Mindoro Oriental, Philippines
CJ David posing for a shot with the Mangyan Kids, who participated in the Palaro sa mga Batang Mangyan (Playfest with the Mangyan Kids) at Talipanan Beach, Puerto Galera, organised by the UP Manila Remontados.
We played different party games with prizes and gave them food and school supplies at the end of the program.
“Mangyan” is a general term that refers to eight (8) ethnolinguistic groups of proto-malay origin that occupies the mountainous region of Mindoro Oriental and Occidental. The Mangyans are the original inhabitants of Mindoro, the seventh largest island in the Philippines. Mangyan population is estimated close to 100,000, about 10 percent of the total population of the island.
More about the Mangyan from the Mangyan Heritage Center.
Some groups of Mangyan have already been interbreeding with Filipino lowlanders. And because of the influx of foreign tourists (who become residents and resort owners as well) to Puerto Galera, some Mangyan kids we interviewd have Japanese, Korean, and Caucasian parents.
EcologicalFootprint.Org
http://www.ecologicalfootprint.org/Global%20Footprint%20Calculator/GFPCalc.html
University of British Columbia
Survey for Sustainability and Eco-Footprint Calculator
http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/eco-survey/
Ecological footprint is a measure of human consumption of natural resources against planet Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate them. This concept and calculation method was developed by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees.
I calculated with EcologicalFootprint.Org and my score there was 14.8. The sustainable score is 15, so I passed, but I don't think that's enough. I should do more.
So what's your score? And what do you think should we do to lessen or to balance our ecological footprint?
2005.04.21 La Carlota City, Negros Occidental, Philippines
CJ David spotted this Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus) along the higway while driving.
Photograph was taken using a Canon EOS 300D with 80-400mm lens.
This bird, about 290mm in length is a resident of the Philippines fairly common in open country usually associated with water along rivers, marshes and ricefields.
It has a cousin - the Blue-throated Bee-eater which I also encountered in Subic, Zambales and have observed catching an insect on the fly! Wow!
