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nimblenewt.bsky.social
Nimblenewt
@nimblenewt.bsky.social
590 followers 680 following 790 posts
🇨🇦Nature nerd by the Salish Sea. Lichen enthusiast; nudibranchs, liverworts, tiny mushrooms, seaweed, plankton, authors and cats. Also amphibians! And invertebrates...
(Note: any newt-handling photos are only to remove them from roads or other dangers.)
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nimblenewt.bsky.social
After not noticing any nifty fungi for ages, I saw so many good ones at work today - weird since it was the first frost of the year! I think this is Helvella vespertina, Fluted Black Elfin Saddle.
#mushrooms #fungifriends #Helvella
A knobbly topped black fungus with a fibrous, hole filled stem grows from a gravel path covered in Doug Fir needles. The black fungus cap is a matte black with a kind of grey patina overlaying it, as if it is dusted with farina like an alpine primula. It feels like a jelly fungus when touched, but the stem, in spite of looking a bit spongy because of all the long holes, feels surprisingly tough. On the top left of the photo is a cedar hedge, on the top right is the base of a big plastic shrub pot, with some drip irrigation lines flopped in the background.
November 25, 2025 at 4:28 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
temporalecology.bsky.social
Our department at UBC is hiring for a professor of forest ecophysiology, including "tree ecophysiology; plant abiotic or biotic stress physiology; forest mortality and climate change responses; forest carbon balance; tree water relations; or nutrient use." Learn more at: tinyurl.com/5da56f5c
October 6, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
thebeeguy.bsky.social
#theBeeAt3
Basic bee facts every day at 3pm.

# 220

#bumblebees are actually warm-blooded creatures.
They have the ability to generate heat internally.
This generation of heat is not constant as with mammals but allows them to thrive in colder regions such as Alaska.
#bees
#nature
#science
#friday
November 21, 2025 at 11:40 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
A really enchanting up-close video of baby aquatic isopods being born! Very interesting.🐸

#inverts #isopods
Industrious Isopods - The Lifecycle of Asellus aquaticus
YouTube video by Let's Scope it out!
youtu.be
November 22, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
nome.bsky.social
I mentioned earlier that they chew on Nile Crocodiles - I wasn't kidding, baby Hippos use them as teething rings since the texture of their scales is satisfying to gum.

Just this 12' long razor-toothed archosaur, sitting there going "stay calm, Clarence, you survived the asteroid, you can do this."
a hippopotamus is standing in a puddle of water next to two crocodiles
Alt: A crocodile doing his best to stay calm while a baby hippo noms on him.
media.tenor.com
March 12, 2025 at 6:43 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
#NatureBookChallenge
#trees #PNWnature
A blue book is pictured on a wood floor. The book has a green-barked plum twig on it, with pointy scaly buds. The book is called Winter Twigs by Helen M. Gilkey and Patricia L. Packard; it is the revised edition, published by Oregon State University Press.
November 21, 2025 at 1:20 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
Orca family reunion time! Neat that the hydrophones let researchers listen to them catching up on the gossip and jokes, and the matriarchs laughing about the brief revival of that old salmon hat fad by the young 'uns!😊
#SalishSea #orcas
All southern resident killer whales gathered into ‘superpod’ south of Vancouver Island
The Orca Behavior Institute says it’s “thrilled” to have seen a southern resident killer whale superpod gather in the waters south of Vancouver Island last week.
cheknews.ca
November 18, 2025 at 8:25 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
#NatureBookChallenge
#trees

Jam-packed with knowledge.
The cover of a book with a photo of a Great Blue Heron perched on the grey-barked branch of a conifer, with green needle tufts along the bottom of the photo and a green haze of foliage in the background. The title of the book is Wildlife & Trees in British Columbia by Fenger, Manning, Cooper, Guy, and Bradford. (Published by Lone Pine Publishing, 2006.)
November 18, 2025 at 7:01 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
“In a carefully choreographed sequence, she pulled the buoy, the attached line, and, ultimately, the attached trap, which had been fully submerged, onto the beach, where she then extracted and ate the bait held within,” according to the research paper.
#
Researchers observe wild wolves using tools on B.C. coast
A female wolf learned to pull fully submerged crab traps out of the water and eat the bait inside in what could be the first known potential tool use in wild wolves.
www.timescolonist.com
November 17, 2025 at 5:40 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
#NatureBookChallenge
#fungifriends
#MycoBookClub since there's no slimemold book club, alas.
A book sits on a wood floor. The book is Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds by Steven L. Stephenson and Henry Stempen. The cover is cream, and has a painting of many slime molds in various iterations, some creeping, some fruiting, some about to fruit. The slimes are orange and brown and flame coloured and black with coral filaments. The painting places them on wood and a branch, with a blue sky as background.
November 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
moriartylab.bsky.social
Canadian COVID Forecast: Nov 8 - Nov 21, 2025

SEVERE: AB
VERY HIGH: CAN, MB, NB, NL, North, NS, QC, SK
HIGH: BC, ON, PEI
MODERATE: none

About 1 in 118 people in Canada are CURRENTLY infected.
This image shows gauges with the Nov 8 - Nov 21, 2025 Forecast scores for Canada, the provinces, & territories. From left to right: Canada: VERY HIGH - 10.1 Alberta: SEVERE - 16.2 British Columbia: HIGH - 8.4 Manitoba: VERY HIGH - 11.9 New Brunswick: VERY HIGH - 14.5 Newfoundland & Labrador: VERY HIGH - 10.1 North: VERY HIGH - 11.5 Nova Scotia: VERY HIGH - 12.7 Ontario: HIGH - 9.2 Prince Edward Island: HIGH - 7.7 Quebec: VERY HIGH - 10.1 Saskatchewan: VERY HIGH - 13.1 A text box reads: "The COVID Forecast is calculated from 3 equally weighted categories: 1) Current infections and spread; 2) Healthcare system impact; 3) Mortality. Within each category there is one sub-category for trends over the most recent week (Trends) and one sub-category for current parameter values relative to a specified baseline (Current values). Trends and current values are weighted equally when determining the final score for a category. All Forecast input data and sources are available here (https://datastudio.google.com/embed/u/0/reporting/42b886cf-d661-488e-b7d8-5c5836b55ab6/page/p_2yqs028mwc). Past Forecast scores are available in the table below. Forecast scores are grouped into 4 ranges: MODERATE (1 to <5, white), HIGH (6 to <10, yellow), VERY HIGH (10 to <15, orange), SEVERE (>15 red)."
November 10, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
incnaturalist.bsky.social
The freckled face of a juvenile Oriental Whip Snake. It will be fluorescent green in a few months.
November 14, 2025 at 5:25 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
terumbudivers.com
Cuttlefish camouflage
youtu.be/P66kyLEnDgI
#gili #giliislands #lombok #diving #scuba #trawangan #diveandstay #giliair #pets #ocean #sealife #marinelife #padi #fish #cuttlefish
Camouflage of Cuttlefish in Gili Lombok
Diving with Terumbu Divers Gili - Lombok Diving and/or stay : https://terumbudivers.com/ Snorkeling trips with statues, turtles : https://snorkelinggili.com/
youtu.be
November 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
terumbudivers.com
Nudibranch Halgerda batangas
#gili #giliislands #lombok #diving #scuba #trawangan #diveandstay #giliair #pets #ocean #sealife #marinelife #padi #seaslug #nudibranch
November 13, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
schmidtocean.bsky.social
Monday mayhem!

We've never seen a scallop crash into an anemone riding a snail through a seafloor field of brittle stars either — but hey, you explore to see something new, right?!

ROV footage from #Ecosde2Cañones expedition along the Patagonian shelf break.
November 10, 2025 at 7:36 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
#NatureBookChallenge
#InvertBookClub
#inverts

These book posts are supposed to be free of commentary but I've gotta say, this book has solved SO MANY "what the heck is *this* Weird Thing?!?" mysteries for me.
A photo of a pale blue book on a brown wood floor. The books is Tracks & Signs of Insects and Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species by Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney. The cover has a big photo of a black beetle leaving foot tracks on amber sand, and 3 smaller photos: on left, of beetle larval feeding tubes in wood stuffed with frass; at the bottom a white egg case enclosed in a veil of intricate webbing; on the right a golden lepidopteran pupal case on either a piece of twig or grass, with some kind of black fuzz next to it.
November 12, 2025 at 11:16 PM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
#naturebookchallenge
#MycoBookClub
The cover of a book called The Outer Spores: Mushrooms of Haida Gwaii, by Paul Kroeger, Bryce Kendrick, Oluna Ceska, and Christine Roberts. It has a red and white Amanita muscaria mushroom at the top, a pale lavender Albatrellus flettii polypore on the bottom left, and a white frilly topped Stereopsis humphreyi mushroom on the bottom right. The game is not to editorialise, but this was the best mycology book I found for the fungi I saw in the deep Walbran and Carmanah rainforests on Vancouver Island's west coast.
November 11, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
jrmorber.bsky.social
A few weeks ago I attended the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival. I went as someone who is interested in most everything in the world, lives in a wet, fungi filled temperate rainforest, and is mostly ignorant about fungi. Here are some things I learned:
November 11, 2025 at 2:58 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
Passiflora quadrangularis throwing out a hidden slightly mangled flower at floor level - I found it via the pretty fragrance, it filled the greenhouse. The photo doesn't do it justice, potting soil on the sensor again. My favorite weirdo giant flower/ anemone mimic! It's about 15cm across.
#botany
Green deeply veined leaves with a quilted texture are the backdrop for a Giant Grenadilla flower, aka Passiflora quadrangularis. It is a striking bloom! Deep burgundy petals surround wiggly corona filaments that are striped purple and white. Six utterly pollen laden anthers surround four white stigmas that have burgundy stem speckling. It's a bonkers flower, it looks like some tropical anemone that would host clownfish or something. Very fragrant; it's the national flower of Grenada and (if pollinated) grows an enormous long fruit, I've read, but that has never happened with this plant in 12 years, likely because I only have the hummingbirds at this time of year when it flowers, and they only want to feast on the surfeit of tubular flowers in the houses. I'm very fond of this plant!
November 11, 2025 at 2:32 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
we're snailposting, post your snails!
A gloriously yellow and glossy brown swirled shell on a 5cm snail stands out against the spring green foliage of a sturdy dandelion. The snail is extended from its shell, downward in the perspective of the photo, its pupils (or equivalent) goggling a bit at the camera. EITHER a Pacific Sideband Snail (Monadenia fidelis) or an invasive Grove Snail (Cepaea sp, possibly C. nemoralis). I *thought* it was a Pacific Sideband snail when I took the photo, but then I got my snail handbook from the RBCMuseum and learned I need to invert them to see if they have an open umbilicus hole (PSideband) or a closed one (invasive grove snail). NONETHELESS, I love this snail, native or invasive. So pretty and skookum!
November 10, 2025 at 5:30 AM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
ni9akers.bsky.social
November 9, 2025 at 12:52 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
This would work for lichen and moss also? Or seaweed? Or cool beach pebbles!
ashwhiffin.bsky.social Ash Whiffin @ashwhiffin.bsky.social · 17d
Super useful tips & tricks for insect specimen imaging from @andrewjohnston.bsky.social! He shares how to build an affordable focus stacking system on your own.

Handy guide available here:
www.insectid.org/post/focus-s...

#ECN2025 📸 🪲
Camera set up with Schmitt box for sense of scale. Photo credit: Andrew Johnston.
November 8, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by Nimblenewt
vincentledvina.bsky.social
A CME has arrived! There is a sharp spike in magnetic field data, and Bt is near 20 nT currently. Bz is trending negative, but it may oscillate around since the CME has just impacted. We'll see if conditions get more intense, but for now, mid-latitude chasers should paying attention now.
November 7, 2025 at 5:38 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
Darn it! I meant to post this on Hallowe'en - a huge lichen with a sinister expression! At Esquimalt lagoon, 3ft from the high tide line, next to the invasive green crab ID sign. I like its jaunty toupée.
#fungifriends #lichen #SalishSea
A large oval shaped white lichen with two pointy ear-shaped growths at the top has brown apothecia which, to a bemused pareidoleic mind, make it appear like it has eyes squinting in a meaningful (possibly predatory) way, and a grimace-shaped smiley where a mouth might be. Also it has a cheery plant between its ears like hair or a bonnet. It is growing on a rock with beach grass all around it. It is two steps from the ocean lagoon's entrance and next to a beautiful red mat of Salicornia (samphire or glasswort, aka Sarcocornia depending on the reference). The lichen probably grew this huge and got its attitude from all the crap of the resident cacaphony of Herring Gulls, always cheeky and swarming when anyone tries to eat a sandwich.
November 6, 2025 at 4:02 AM
nimblenewt.bsky.social
Everything interesting in one article!
Some stinkbugs’ legs carry a mobile fungal garden
A dedicated organ grows the fungus, which deters parasitic wasps.
arstechnica.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:50 AM