Thursday, June 11, 2009

Science on vacation!!!

Don't worry -- science itself never takes a vacation!

But if you're on the lookout for it, you can find science everywhere, even when you're on vacation, such as our recent trip to Lago Maggiore.


Look! Orange lichen!

Now, I know this is just basic naturalism (so perhaps doesn't really count as science...?), but we love to observe the wildlife wherever we go!


The lizards look a lot like the ones we observed in Lourdes!

My kids observed: "Now we know there are lizards in Italy, too."

We haven't seen any lizards in Switzerland yet, but we've seen something better: newts! I'd never seen newts in the wild before, but we've seen them plenty of times in the streams of Zürich. Maybe I'll post a picture sometime...

In the meantime, here's the obligatory tourist photo of the white peacocks of the Borromean Islands:

5 comments:

sam-i-am said...

I've never heard of the white peacocks. Do you have a close-up? Ahh, google images came through.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Sam-I-Am!!!

Yeah, I was pretty surprised when I saw them! But this is apparently the sort of thing that was all the rage a few centuries ago for Italian nobles' gardens.

Melisma said...

Ooh! Lichen! I have a thing for lichen and love to observe when hiking. I'll be on the lookout for orange lichen this summer.

Rebecca said...

Newts! I'm not sure I even know what those look like. But I DO know their eyes are great for potions. You know, just in case.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Melisma!!!

Yeah, I always look for mosses and lichens too. And I point it out to my kids, who then do the same thing. :D

Hey Rebecca!!!

True, I hadn't even thought of the potion-making possibilities! I'm actually not 100% certain these are really newts, but they're something in the salamander/newt family...