Sheri L. Williamson 🪶🌎🧪
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sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Sheri L. Williamson 🪶🌎🧪
@sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
1.4K followers 850 following 560 posts
Naturalist 🦋 birder 🦉 ornithologist & hummingbird researcher 🪶 field guide author 📖 photographer 📷 artist 🎨 gardener 🌱 chicken/dog mom, desert rat, border resident 🇺🇲🇲🇽, democracy fan 🗽. She/her.
https://bio.link/sherilwilliamson
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sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
These potentially disastrous instructions were among the top results when I searched for microwave rice cooker instructions on DuckDuckGo. DDG has since added the option of permanently excluding sites from search results, but I'm not sure that helps much with the proliferation of AI slop sites.
Screenshot from an AI-generated website called "Tastessence." Two items in a bullet list: [bullet] Now let the cooker stay on your kitchen counter for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the microwave oven simultaneously. [bullet] Once the microwave is heated, place the cooker within the microwave for prescribed number of minutes. The time required for cooking varies with proportions of rice and the rice variety being used.
November 26, 2025 at 10:11 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Introduce yourself with four spaceships.
Two alien ships with green lights at the front of the fuselage and the tips of curved "wings," cruising over a devastated landscape with blackened and burning trees and smoke, with green hills in the background. A white spaceship consisting of a broad dusk and two narrow horizontal cylinders attached by rectangular structures to a tapered cylinder of larger diameter below A man with curly brown hair and narrow, clean-shaven face, wearing a floppy broad-brimmed hat, rust red coat with tan elbow patches, loose pants in a tan heather fabric, and a long knitted scarf with horizontal stripes of varying colors and widths, stands in front of a blue police box on a city street, in front of a movie marquee advertising the animated children's movie "Lady and the Tramp," two men with their backs turned to the viewer, and a green and white bus-like vehicle A complex spaceship consisting of transparent habitat domes criss-crossed with an array of lights over living trees, all connected to a central cluster of complex structures
November 25, 2025 at 1:51 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
If you have multiple Gmail accounts connected to the Android app, look for "Smart features" under the "General" settings for each account rather than in "General settings."

You'll need to disable "Smart features" on each account individually.
[Screenshot of Gmail Android app Settings menu for multiple accounts] <-- Settings General settings my_other_account@gmail.com my_account@gmail.com Add account [Screenshot of Gmail Android app account settings menu] General Chat Show the chat tab Default reply action Reply Mobile signature [obscured text] Conversation view Group emails with the same topic together. This setting may take some time to apply. Smart features When you turn this setting on, you agree to let Gmail, Chat, and Meet use my email, chat, and video content to personalize your experience with smart features in these products. [Arrow pointing to check box to right of text]
November 20, 2025 at 10:33 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Darkness, shmarkness. The shorter days of fall signal the Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) that it's time for a glow up.

Its wild relatives are epiphytes endemic to the mountains of southeastern Brazil where they provide nectar for hummingbirds. 🌱🪶 #garden #ornithophily
A tropical cactus with long, drooping branches composed of a series of flat "joints" with coarsely toothed edges. Most ofvthe longer branches are tipped with elongated, bilaterally symmetrical flowers whose petals are deep pink at the tips fading to white at the base. The plant is in a cylindrical terra cotta pot on a bed of gravel in a dark glazed saucer resting on a wooden shelf in front of a light-colored wall. A closeup of the cactus flowers in side view showing their elongated reproductive structures adapted for pollination by hummingbirds.
November 15, 2025 at 5:46 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
A short time exposure of the aurora taken with my phone camera's "Night" setting.
A red sky glow over dark hills and scattered city lights, a foreground tree illuminated yellow.
November 12, 2025 at 4:53 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
9:45 p.m. on the south side of Bisbee, Arizona, less than 6 miles north of the Mexican border. Photo taken using my phone's "Night" setting; in the live view, the aurora is a faint but noticeable red glow extending well up from the northern horizon.
A night scene with a red glow in the sky over dark hills with scattered city lights and an illuminated tree in the lower left corner of the image. The photo was a time exposure taken using a smartphone camera on the Night setting.
November 12, 2025 at 4:50 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
A still image of Robert Duvall in his role as Lt. William "Bill" Kilgore in the movie Apocalypse Now, shurtless and wearing a broad-brimmed cavalry hat with gold decorations. Superimposed text reads "I LOVE THE SMELL OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MORNING"
November 5, 2025 at 3:35 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Evans's book has been through several radically different several covers. My copy was a book club edition, which probably explains why it has a much more attractive dust jacket.
A hardcover book whose dust jacket is white framed in dark brown with an illustration of an orange butterfly, red ladybug, black wasp, and brown fly. Text in the bottom panel reads: A distinguished scientist's witty and informative view of the habits of man and his insect neighbors Life on a Little-known Planet Howard Ensign Evans author of Wasp Farm
November 5, 2025 at 2:02 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Here's more jacobin blue for you.
A long, slim hummingbird in flight with its wings extended over its back. It has a deep blue head and neck and snow white breast and belly framed by a tapering band of aqua green along its sides extending to the wing linings, back, and rump.
October 13, 2025 at 7:21 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.
Screenshot of a USA TODAY post on Twitter: "Tourists during a recent visit to Yellowstone spotted a newborn elf and took it to a police station. The elf later escaped into the forest."
October 11, 2025 at 7:46 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.
Screenshot of a Facebook ad with a photo of an elevated cage made from weathered wood, hardware cloth, and corrugated metal, helpfully described as "Chicken coup"
October 11, 2025 at 7:43 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.
Screenshot of an ad picturing a plastic frog skeleton and internal organs inside a vaguely frog-shaped transparent shell, described as "Frog Antonym Kit"
October 11, 2025 at 7:32 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.
Screenshot from a Facebook Marketplace ad selling "Perineal plants"
October 11, 2025 at 7:27 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
With my favorite holiday coming up, it's time to share my favorite Halloween costume from 2015: a mashup of a traditional Día de los Muertos catrina character and the Kelly/Mouse "Skull & Roses" cover art for the Grateful Dead's self-titled 1971 live album.
A person in realistic skull makeup with a crown of red silk roses, curly brown shoulder-length hair, and black clothing.
October 11, 2025 at 6:06 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Sunday #bloomscrolling: Mexican Sage, Salvia mexicana 'Limelight', a natural mutation introduced to horticulture in 1978. Like many ornithophilous Mexican sages, it blooms in fall, perfect to welcome migrating hummingbirds returning to their winter homes but frustrating for northern gardeners. 🌱🪶
Long blue-violet flowers of Salvia mexicana emerging from chartreuse calyces. Salvia mexicana 'Limelight': A tall plant with multiple stalks bearing large heart-shaped leaves, dense clusters of chartreuse calyces, and a few long blue-violet flowers.
October 5, 2025 at 6:05 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Yay! A celebratory juvenile Brown Pelican from a visit to the Puerto Vallarta area in Jalisco, Mexico last January. 🪶
A winsome young Brown Pelican hanging out at the dock hoping for a handout.
October 4, 2025 at 4:41 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
In every day of her public life, Dr. Goodall demonstrated that you don't have to be flamboyant, hyperbolic, or confrontational to make a difference in the world. May her example continue to inspire generations of scientists and activists.
"You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." -Jane Goodall "Somehow we must keep hope alive - a hope that we can find a way to educate all, alleviate poverty, assuage anger, and live in harmony with the environment, with animals, and with each other. - Dr. Jane Goodall the Jane Goodall Institute ©Michael Christopher Brown/ Mognum Photo
October 1, 2025 at 9:28 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
It's #TuesdayRoosday! The ladies stopped laying weeks ago when they went into molt, and Ziggy seems to think they need a little coaching to get back to work. 🐓🪶 #roosplaining #chickens
October 1, 2025 at 4:43 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
It's been a rough week. These are for you.
#bloomscrolling 🌱
Zinnias, Cosmos, and Mexican Sunflowers: An overhead view of a flowerbed filled with daisy-like flowers in shades of pastel and deep pink, red, orange, yellow, coral, lavender, and white. Zinnia elegans 'Candy Stripe': A daisy-like flower with many creamy white petals streaked in crimson around a dome of tiny yellow flowers. Cosmos bipinnatus: Top view of a daisy-like flower with eight broad, white petals edged in pink and a small yellow disk. Cosmos bipinnatus: A daisy-like flower with eight broad, pink petals with a narrow band of magenta at the base around a small yellow disk.
September 26, 2025 at 4:29 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
The intersection of gardening 🌱 and the Alien franchise. #AlienEarth
A small canteloupe that has partially split open into three segments, revealing a gooey ball of seeds (not a facehugger - I checked).
September 21, 2025 at 4:15 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Fall migration is helping to keep the existential dread at a manageable level. After a rough night caring for a sickly chicken, an hour on the patio with binoculars rewarded me with the first returning Green-tailed Towhee and a female (un)Painted Bunting (a regional rarity). 🪶
A meme featuring a Green-tailed Towhee with gray underparts, cinnamon red cap, and yellow-green accents on its wings and tail. The text reads "TURN IT ON WIND IT UP BLOW IT OUT GTTO," referencing the 4-letter code for Green-tailed Towhee and the 1964 sports car song "G.T.O." by Ronny and the Daytonas.
September 18, 2025 at 6:31 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
We should see the first Sandhill Cranes in southeastern Arizona in just a couple of weeks! It's going to be a tough winter for them, with too little rain to fill the playa lakes where they roost. Hoping that avian flu doesn't add to their problems. 🤞🪶
Chaos erupts as thousands of Sandhill Cranes take to the sky at the approach of a Golden Eagle. Taken at Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area near Bisbee, Arizona.
September 15, 2025 at 3:16 AM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Song of the Monsoon 9:2: The weeds appear on the earth, the time of the whining of mosquitoes is come, and the voice of the string trimmer is heard in our land.

The summer rains have been fickle and spotty, good enough for bitey bugs and weedy plants but tough on flowers. More in alt text. 🪶🌱🦋
Pipevine Swallowtail on Mexican Sunflower. Lots of these beauties in the yard, attracted by our pollinator garden and wild Watson's Pipevine, their local larval food plant. End view of a long garden bed filled with colorful flowers in shades of red, orange, yellow, pink, and white. Every summer, we plant several varieties of common zinnias, two species of cosmos, and Mexican Sunflower for butterflies, native bees, and other pollinators. Though irrigation gave the seeds an early start this year, the plants struggled through day after day of heat and drying winds when it should have been raining every afternoon. The bottom part of a bottle-style hummingbird feeder with the upper half of a small hummingbird visible on the right side of the base. While a territorial juvenile Rufous was busy chasing another hummingbird, a juvenile male Calliope took advantage of his absence to tank up. He chugged so much sugar water that it looked like he had a spare tire around his neck. A long-winged butterfly with a net-like pattern of black over a yellow-orange background rests with wings open on a bright yellow Cosmos flower. Arizona [Elada] Checkerspot is one of our tiniest butterflies. They visit our yard to sample nectar and lay eggs on our desert honeysuckles (Anisacanthus spp.). We've recorded over 90 species of butterflies in our desert oasis, including Mexican rarities such as Broad-banded Swallowtail and Silver Emperor.
September 2, 2025 at 6:05 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Hummingbird activity is up, which provides lots of cheap entertainment but also makes a lot of extra work. This summer's monsoon fizzled into a non-soon, and the resulting scarcity of natural nectar forces hummingbirds and "tequila bats" to rely more on feeders. More in the alt text. 🪶🌱
A hand holding six saucer-style hummingbird feeders of different sizes in front of planting beds with colorful flowers. We clean our hummingbird feeders every 1 to 2 days this time of year. Feeders hanging in the open get licked dry every night by nectar-feeding bats (mostly Lesser Long-nosed, Leptonycteris [curasoae] yerbabuenae), and these get washed and disinfected with hydrogen peroxide daily. The sugar water lasts longer inside our homemade bat-excluder cages, but we still wash and disinfect the feeders every couple of days to keep our avian clientele happy and healthy (we let the bats finish off the leftover sugar water the night before cleaning - waste not, want not). Front view in closeup of a small morning glory flower, vivid orange-red with a yellow-orange center, white stamens and pistil, and a few white pollen grains adhering to the flower's corolla. The sugar-rich nectar of Trans-Pecos Morning Glory (Ipomoea cristulata), a native annual wildflower, is a vital energy resource for southbound hummingbirds migrating through the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. Unfortunately, its seedlings are fragile and rely on regular rainfall to survive, grow, and bloom. Even a few days without rain can cause high seedling mortality and loss of nectar production capacity. Climate change is increasing the frequency and duration of drought in the desert Southwest, with devastating effects on wildlife of all kinds. A saucer-style hummingbird feeder hangs inside a cylindrical "cage" made from flexible garden fence wire with medium-large openings. The cage hangs from thin silver chains in front of a garden bed full of plants. An annoyed young Rufous Hummingbird is perched on the top wire of the cage behind the right chain. The cage keeps nectar-feeding bats (a.k.a. "tequila bats," because they pollinate the flowers of the large agaves from which tequila is made) from draining the feeder at night. Many hummingbird-pollinated flowers are relatively easy to grow as garden plants, but the slow-growing agaves and giant cacti that nectar bats feed on are a much bigger challenge. These specialized bats need large expanses of healthy desert and grassland habitats to support their food plants, which in turn support thousands of other species of wildlife as well as many rural and indigenous communities.
August 26, 2025 at 7:47 PM
sherilwilliamson.bsky.social
Dahlias are one of Mexico's many gifts to the world's gardens. This one needed a ridiculous amount of attention to protect it from drought, heat, and hungry wildlife, but what a payoff! #bloomscrolling
A large multi-petaled flower with a yellow central disk and crimson petals tipped in pinkish white.
August 20, 2025 at 4:31 PM