Tuesday, 30 July 2013
NEW ARRIVAL - SET OF VIVARIUMS
Here is a new arrival I forgot to post about, a bit busy with other things.
It is one complete unit with a set of four Vivariums with each one being 8 to 10 inches square with metal mesh lids for ventilation. I am going to set up a number of features with each one being very different from the next. I will also set up my own lighting which will only total a few watts, except one that may be 16 watts, lol.
SOme silicone sealer will be the order of the day to set these up with each one looking extremely good and perfect for what I want and what suits the animals I have in mind.
Yes well you may well wonder what I have in mind so I will give you a little idea of what I am currently thinking but this may change depending on what is available as I might see something that really grabs me and I have to have it, lol.
Anyway here is what I have in mind....well sort of...
LIZARDS
Jeweled Ground Geck - Stenadactylus stenadctylus are a dead certainty here
Dwarf Chameleon of some kind or other
FROGS
HYPEROLIUS MARMORATUS
HYPEROLIUS TAENIATUS
RHACOPHORUS REINWADRTII (Proper ones with loads of blue and not the ones I have seen dotted about)
TOADS
Northern race of Green Toads - Bufo viridis but preferably young Natterjack Toads - Bufo calamita
Oak Toads - Bufo quercicus
SALAMANDERS
PAINTED ENSATINA (Ensatina escholtzii)
TYLOTRITON KWEICHOWENSIS
TYLOTRITON LAONENSIS
I do also have two others one the same dimensions but taller by about 4 to 6 inches that houses three botanical orchids within it and already receiving light and heat.
I also have a bigger one still which is also a stand alone one that is 10 or 12 inches long.
I am also thinking of adding more similar ones either another set the same or bigger one of just THREE sections?!
So as well as the weather cooling down which means I will now get moving again and helped by the fact that my bike has now been completely fixed and only yesterday I finally sorted out the gearing once and for all?!
Turns out that I fiddled with the intricate setting of the rear derailleur as we as the front one last year which must have been when the rear axle become broken!! Well even though I got those three gears back I had not been able to access since last year I had a problem whereby some shifting on the crank-set was a bit iffy and I could not get the rear gears quite right. With the rear cassette being 7 speeds what I was getting was rattling towards one end of the gears. Either towards the cogs with the most teeth and widest diameter or the ones with the least and the smallest.
I spotted the little screws that do the fine tuning on the front derailleur and started adjusting them and got that spot on, it seems and fingers crossed.
I then turned my attention to the two screws on the rear derailleur too and altered them. Of course it dawned on me that one screw adjusts towards one end of the cog for going up a gear while the other screw adjusts for the other side for going DOWN a gear, lol.
SO in my desperation to fiddle with a bike not worth spending money I did not have on I spent a great deal of time trying to do things myself. This did not really change this year either until a month after I changed the rear axle and realised something was wrong. Fed up with working on that because it is first of all tricky, second of all doing things technical and intricate on something that is unmanageable size and no proper work stand to hold it when you are guaranteed to get pain in various areas you get fed up. It did not help being bloody hot too so it was dumped in a bike shop with some nice chaps to correct what I had done wrong.
If I had to do another axle I think I could now and front would be easy, mistake I made was that I undid both cone nuts on the rear and I should have undone one and left the other where it was. I did not and when it all went back together it worked but was all out of kilter. I mean I probably did 50 to 100 miles on it after I replaced the axle. My journeys to Lea Valley Park can end up being a 20 mile or more round trip and many others at around 10 miles. Also it is 3 miles to my town centre and 4 miles to the crop crossing. It is probably around 4 miles to The Meadow, another place I visit for photography and video content for my British Wildlife blog and YouTube account.
As far as the animals are concerned I am considering travelling to Vocklabruck and Innsbruck in Austria and Prague in the Czech Republic as there is a chap in each of these countries that has some very interesting things and we get on quite well. I am very interested in making an arrangement to go over in a few months time or early 2014?!
I will not say at this stage what they have or who they are, only there rough whereabouts as it would cause a bit of a stir if known what it was they had and how to get in contact with them. These chaps are highly professional and very nice chaps indeed and I would not want to see certain ... people go over and end up promising to pay at a later date and them not receiving the money...EVER, lol.
INTERMISSION & iTEAM PUTTING 'i' BACK IN TEAM - PHASE 4
- NIKON D800E SLR CAMERA + Telephoto and Macro Lenses
- CBoardman Mountain Bike in Halfords @ £850 which will lose 7lbs on current weight
- Out of current reach building blocks to at least ONE PC Builda) One for work and intended to become a SERVER RIGb) Another enthusiast GAMING RIG as this is my HOBBY (YESSS OK ONE OF THEM LOL) and would rocket my Computing blog among others!
- Samsung Series 7 46” TV
- HQ Blu-Ray Player
- Dishwasher but will have to be tiny as I am CRAMPED here
- One of those little automatic vacuums, lol. How cool and hoe helpful.
- Litespeed Occoe with Mavic SLR Rims, Red Magura Marta SL Brakes, SRAM XX Gears, XTR or Carbon Chain-set, DT Swiss Carbon Forks 80-100mm travel, RaceFace Carbon FLAT BARS, Ritchey WCS Carbon Seat-post, Selle Italia Gel Saddle and Crank Brothers Egg-Beater 4TI pedals in ORANGE (preferably red if poss)(This is just to replace the one that was stolen by a council and bailiff they got £2,800 for but told me they got £400 for and was also featured with my name in What Mountain Bike Magazine)
Saturday, 20 July 2013
INTER-GENERIC BREEDING IN SNAKES
I was WRONG!
Now the rumour in question was over that which we know today as the Jungle Corn which was a hybrid between a Corn Snake, of the Elaphe family, and a Californian Kingsnake, belonging to the Lampropeltis family.
These two families could not be further apart and I adored those belonging to Lampropeltis while turned my admittedly snobby nose up to the Elaphe family. IN fact even within Lampropeltis it was actually made up of FOUR, count them FOUR, separate types of snakes!! Not FOUR species of snakes FOUR TYPES of snakes...AT THE TIME....
1) King Snakes:
Lampropeltis getula (13 types apprx)
Lampropeltis nigra
Lampropeltis calligaster (3 tyoes apprx)
2) Milk Snakes
Lampropeltis trangulum (24 types)
Lampropeltis zonata (7 types apprx) LISTED AS KING SNAKE (MOUNTAIN)
Lampropeltis pyromelana (3 types apprx) LISTED AS KING SNAKE (MOUNTAIN)
Lampropeltis triangulum hondurensis (oops a traingulum lol)
3) Scarlet Kingsnake
Lampropeltis elapsoides (cannot believe I always remember that name?!)
4) Grey Banded Kingsnakes
Lampropeltis alterna
Now in all honesty this family is a mess. First off I would say of the traingulum, all of which I am pretty much un-familar with bar a few, there are two that I always thought were separate species in their own right and they are the Honduran Milk Snake and the Mexican Milk Snake, hondurensis and annulata respectively.
Many of these I would wager would not breed in a million years (metaphorically speaking) so you can imagine my laughing when someone tells me that a Californian Kingsnake, Lampropeltis getula, breeds with a Corn Snake, Elaphe gutatta, both are North American species of snakes. Elaphe are found around the word too.
It was a shock. But then nothing for years until a couple of years back I was hearing all kinds of crazy things happening and could not understand what was going on. Then an old friend of mine suddenly had these baby snakes running around and yet he only had a Green Anaconda and a Boa constrictor!
The next thing I see these pictures coming through of these snakes with round black blotches arranged in rows along the body, it was crazy stuff.
Now yest there are loads of colour morphs and they sprang up out of the blue but I was hearing of more inter-generic breeding.
What made people think is when I asked the following....;Why now?' to which the say 'What?' and I then said 'Well yes, OK we had that Jungle Corn a few years back but there has been nothing else since then until very recently and even a friend of ours suddenly breeds two large snakes from different families you would bet you house on was not possible?! They just did it and no one was more shocked than he was!!'
I keep asking myself that same thing and why this sudden tendency to cross breed between two different genera?! I am 45 and at 5 years of age I was running around my father's shop full of Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish! This shop appeared on TV several times over several years. Finally it closed down and my father remained as a laboratory technician at a local school for years until he decided with a friend of his to do some wholesaling and eventually we became importers with vans and delivery runs. Eventually that died down in an economic slow down no ones wants to talk about, well either that or because I walked away from it to attend university?! Eventually and with one of my brothers they, and he, got back into retail again until, well that bit is not so ancient history whereby my father was setup to look the fool, but they tried for guilty shady dealings, by the BBC and was dead within a year.
In other words I have been in this for forty years easy and nothing. Then that jungle Corn and then another big gap and all of a sudden all this inter-genera breeding goes into overdrive. I wonder if the ANIMAL KINGDOM has more to tell us than we care to look for?!
For me I do not understand why you would do it?! Myself and many old hat others are into species animals and not colour morphs and hybrids. Even though my hybrid Phalaenopsis Orchids are stunningly beautiful there is still that nagging 'but they are only hybrids' thought in my head. I know others think the same way too.
Maybe it is that conservation and mothering side of use that loves and adores these things and keep being told they are in trouble of becoming extinct and we feel we are helping?!
I am pretty sure that is how it is for me and that the beauty in it is that nature created this and not 'MAN'?!
I could type out a whole length other post about how the laws and regulations protecting species will actually and eventually be the main cause for wiping those species out completely.
Why? Because they are stupid and laid out by stupid old people with no understanding whatsoever and these over the top laws and regulations will stay in place until someone realises it was all wrong and when it is too late too.
Probably because they are not huge, big and cuddly as well as draws masses of attention from the naive public like say that of ummmm GIANT PANDAS?!
I call it the Giant Panda Syndrome of Society, lol.
Now them breeding with RED PANDAS??? Now THAT I would like to see?!?!
Good luck with that and let me know how it turns out!
LMAO!
GLOWLIGHT DANIO - DANIO CHOPRAE
Now these were known to me under the Latin name or Danio choprae but I have also recently seen people list it as Brachydanio choprae so not really sure which of the two genus names is the correct one.
From a taxonomical viewpoint it is a hard one to call for me. It certainly IS different from the Zebra and Leopard Danios but may more like them than other members of the Danio genus?!
It has been a long time since I really looked at and of the names of this Danio group and I know there are a couple of larger ones too. The spotty and stripey Danios are all very closely related and as far as I know I have seen two spotty ones, one with both stripes and spots. Along with these there is some fiery finned variety called Danio kithyit if that is a proper name and not some temporary one that has been assigned be a breeding farm in Singapore?! All these are closely related and more so to each other than Danio choprae is to any of them.
Also some Danio species hybridize and for me this is a very strong reason for two separate species to belong to the same family.
I believe this of amphibians also and used to think that for reptiles but of late some really bizarre things have been happening in the reptile world and I find it very odd. When pointed out to others they then do find it odd too. So I cannot apply this rule to reptiles anymore and bizarrely it is only within SNAKES taht this applies, lol.
More next post.
Monday, 8 July 2013
CARAMEL HOG ISLAND BOA - BOA CONSTRICTOR IMPERATOR
Sure they used the word 'Caramel' when they were telling me the name which I then forgot all about. So it may only be half correct, lmao.
CORN SNAKE EATING A BIRD - ELAPHE GUTTATA
Do not worry this bird was already dead and nothing goes to waste and provides a varied diet for the snake.
ROSY BOA - LICHANURA TRIVIRGATA
MARSH FROGS - PELOPHYLAX RIDIBUNDA
Not the exact ones and these were found elsewhere and kindly provided to me for content unknowingly by a chap who is one of two that seem to be insanely jealous and gossipy about me, *sigh* some things never change!
With some bright sun these go an emerald green and get quite large but would eat quite a few things too so a no-no for your garden pond, lol.
Unless of course you only want Marsh Frogs but be warned they are deafeningly noisy!
Sunday, 7 July 2013
IN SEARCH OF THE NIGHT PARROT
How intelligent this guy is, will done.
I must say I find this extremely interesting that even something as large as a parrot can still be discovered?! This had been named Pezoporus occudentalis which remind me that when listing Latin names the genus airways starts with a capital letter and the species a lower case letter. In the event if names for hybrids and colour morphs domestically produced names must start with a capital letter too and no species names so that the fact that it is not a wild specimen is obvious.
Lol.
Oh how I envy people that get to go off and entrusted to search for new species!!
I was once requested to do this with an organisation I have been at odds with for several years now, the BBC. Well more specifically someone who worked with BBC Wildlife magazine as I pointed out to him the things they can get wrong. Unfortunately I stupidly turned this down sure a woman who single handedly and systematically destroyed my life and got every office you can think if to help her do it. She then set about doing the range to our daughter.
So I did not go off to the Amazon Forest in South America write unfortunately!
Strangely enough another offer was out to me by a Japanese chap who was involved in a big way in publishing across Asia. I featured in a number if magazines I never received the copies of. I know they printed because each time I contacted anyone I got a response of "ooh I know you! You toad guy from magazine!"
There was also a reptile magazine and a....FISH magazine, lol.
I an very interested to see this Parrot and more specifically reinforces my brief that such secretive and low life animals like amphibians and reptiles (oh and fish) still must have dozens if not hundreds of species yet to be discovered?!
Now if only....?!