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A few more scenery-type photos from our recent Belize adventure.
PHOTO ONE. As we approached the Lamanai Mayan ruins area in a boat on the New River, the largest of the structures stands higher than the surrounding jungle. I can only imagine what this area must have looked like 2,000 years ago when it was built, and this city was bustling with the activity of thousands of Mayans.
PHOTO TWO. This is a smaller structure, called the Jaguar Temple, but it is still breathtaking.
PHOTO THREE. An example of why we love to snorkel Belize's Great Barrier Reef. It is an underwater wonderland.
PHOTO FOUR. The Belize River. Awesome place to spot birds, iguanas, crocodiles, and much more. We drifted this river for hours, both during daylight and at night, looking at wildlife.
PHOTO FIVE. I took this photo while snorkeling at the famous "Blue Hole." This is part of the shallow rim around the Blue Hole, which is about 1,000 feet across. The diversity of corals and sponges here is astounding.
PHOTO SIX. Trish doing what she loves to do. I think she loves snorkeling even more than I do.
PHOTO SEVEN. Sunset on our last night on Turneffe Atoll, a massive array of mangrove islands surrounded by coral reefs. We spent a week there, snorkeling every day.
Photo Credits:
All photos by Stan C. Smith
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Normally I share wildlife photos, but here are a few scenery-type photos from our recent trip to Belize.
FIRST PHOTO – A view from the air as we approached Belize City.
SECOND PHOTO – We floated a river on inner tubes, which gave us a unique perspective of the area.
THIRD PHOTO – The river float also took us through an extensive cave. Once we got several hundred yards away from the cave opening, we were in total darkness (only the light from our headlamps) for almost an hour.
FOURTH PHOTO – Convenient wooden walkways at Howler Monkey Resort. This was a charming resort run by a wonderful couple and their two sons.
FIFTH PHOTO – Half Moon Caye. This became Belize’s first nature reserve in 1981, and the first marine protected area in Central America.
SIXTH PHOTO – Belize’s Great Barrier Reef has some astounding underwater scenery, with a nice diversity of corals and other marine life.
SEVENTH PHOTO – Trish in her happy place at sunset, bare feet in the sand. This is at Blackbird Caye, which is part of Turneffe Atoll, about thirty miles off the coast of Belize. This was the fourth time we have spent a week there, snorkeling every day and eating wonderful food.
Photo Credits:
All photos by Stan C. Smith
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I'm going to tie this topic in with one of my sci-fi series. Profusion is the grand finale of my Diffusion series. This epic novel puts Bobby in a seemingly impossible situation where he has to save the entire world from a horrifying plague (a profusion) of grotesque transformations. With ground zero on the island of Puerto Rico, millions of out-of-control nanobots are transforming every living thing they touch into bizarre and deadly amalgamations of various creatures. It seems nothing can stop this terrifying profusion.
But Bobby is no ordinary teenager. In fact, he is not what he seems to be at all. He comes up with a plan, which involves millions of birds that can disperse over the landscape quickly. When each bird reaches its destination, it will transform into hundreds of fast-flying dragonflies. And when each dragonfly reaches its destination, it will divide into thousands of the tiniest flies Bobby can think of, called no-see-ums. Each of these minuscule flies has a mission to carry out. It's definitely not a perfect plan, but it may be humanity's only hope.
If you like that kind of stuff (and who doesn't?), I recommend checking out the Diffusion series—FIRST IMAGE.
https://www.amazon.com/Diffusion/dp/B07F7LMW5Z
Now let's get to the topic. What the heck is a no-see-um?
No-see-ums are called different names in different parts of the world. They are actually a type of fly (the order Diptera), but they are much smaller than many other flies such as mosquitoes or deer flies. In fact, some of them are so small you simply cannot see them without a magnifier. You don't even know they are on your skin until you feel them biting you. That's how they got their name, no-see-um.
During the warmer months, we have a lot of no-see-ums here in Missouri, and they seem to like biting me more than they like biting Trish. This is why I call them the devil's spawn. The little jerks.
THE SECOND IMAGE is a no-see-um biting someone's leg:
Most of the insects people call no-see-ums are in a family of flies referred to as biting midges. Depending on where you're from, you may have heard them called midgies, knotts, moose flies, sand flies, punkies, or biting gnats. some of these names, though, like gnats and sand flies, are ambiguous because they are used for a number of other insect groups. Amazingly, there are 4,000 to 5,000 species of no-see-ums (biting midges) that we know of, and they live in almost every part of the world. They've even been found on Mount Everest!
No-see-ums are so small they can fly right through typical screens on windows and doors. Whenever I purchase a tent, I make sure the windows are made of "no-see-um netting," a special type of netting with very small holes. In order to block no-see-ums, the netting must have mesh size of at least 4,900 holes per square inch.
Like with mosquitoes, it is the female no-see-ums that bite. The females have a needle-like sucker along with a separate injector tube. The sucker is obviously for sucking up blood. The injector tube is used to inject a small amount of anticoagulant, to keep the blood from clotting so it will flow freely up the sucker tube. It is actually our body's allergic reaction to this anticoagulant that causes the itch. Some people are more allergic to it than others. Fortunately for me, the itch only lasts about 20 minutes, but for some people it can go on for several days or even weeks.
Female no-see-ums seek out blood for the same reason female mosquitoes do—to get nourishment for developing their eggs. Once a female gets a blood meal, she will lay her eggs on water or wet sand (water is necessary for the larvae). A female can lay 400 or more eggs at a time, and she can breed 5-7 times in her adult life. I guess that's why they're so abundant.
Although I despise no-see-ums, I also love them. Why? Because no-see-ums (along with gull midges) are the only pollinators of the cacao tree. So without them, we would have no chocolate!
Photo Credits:
- Biting midge (no-see-um) - Dunpharlain, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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THE FIRST PHOTO is a BANANA SLUG. These slugs are variable in color, sometimes bright yellow, sometimes with black spots, and sometimes various shades of brown or gold. They get their name not only from sometimes being yellow, but also from their immense size, growing to almost ten inches long.
THE SECOND PHOTO shows that this banana slug is close to six inches long. Slugs are terrestrial air-breathing gastropods. Gastropods include snails and slugs (which are basically snails without a shell).
While banana slugs are native to the Pacific Northwest, THE THIRD PHOTO is a EUROPEAN SLUG, which is an invasive species. Something about the climate in the northwest must be perfect for slugs to grow to enormous sizes, because these European slugs are also big (this one was also about six inches).
THE FOURTH PHOTO is a YELLOW-FACED BUMBLEBEE. We have bumblebees in Missouri, of course, but I immediately saw this this species looks different—the only place it has yellow is right behind the head (and just a touch of yellow on the tip of the abdomen) . The yellow-faced bumblebee, which only lives on the west coast, is an extremely important pollinator for agriculture.
THE FIFTH PHOTO is a WESTERN LEAFCUTTER BEE. These are larger than a honeybee, almost as big as a bumblebee. They live in many of the western states, but not as far east as Missouri. These bees are usually solitary, but at breeding time, a small group of them will work together to dig a burrow in the ground, where they lay their eggs.
All photos by Stan C. Smith
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THE FIRST PHOTO is a NORTHERN ALLIGATOR LIZARD, which only lives in the Pacific Northwest. I had to search for a while to find a few of these cool lizards. They are quite secretive, and I spotted this one peeking out from under a piece of loose bark.
THE SECOND PHOTO is a bizarre kind of lichen called METHUSELAH'S BEARD. A lichen is actually two kinds of organisms living together in partnership: fungus and algae. The fungus provides a moist place for the algae to live, and the algae provide food by doing photosynthesis. This lichen hangs from trees, and it is the longest type of lichen in the world.
THE THIRD PHOTO is a CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE. We see a lot of black-capped chickadees in Missouri, but this species only lives in the Pacific Northwest.
THE FOURTH PHOTO is a PACIFIC WREN. This wren species lives—you guessed it—only in the Pacific Northwest. Missouri has house wrens, Carolina wrens, and winter wrens, but it's always fun to see a new species.
THE FIFTH PHOTO is a ROOSEVELT ELK. Wild elk used to roam throughout Missouri, but by the 1880s, they were completely extirpated by humans. They were reintroduced in 2011 to 2013, and now we have several breeding populations in Missouri. The Roosevelt elk, however, is a subspecies that lives—you guessed it again—only in the Pacific Northwest.
I'll share a few more Washington critters in another post soon.
All photos by Stan C. Smith
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The plants covering those branches are mostly mosses. The Pacific Northwest is home to about 1,000 species of mosses, many of which grow on the branches of trees. Mosses are what we call nonvascular plants—they do not have veins to carry water and nutrients up the plant. Therefore, they cannot grow very tall because they have to soak up water from rain and from the surface they are growing on.
Many trees in the Pacific Northwest are also covered by lichens. Check out the PHOTO TWO. The bright green and brown plant in the center of this photo is an example of moss. Surrounding the moss are two types of lichens—one type that grows in flat lobes, and another type that grows as long, thin, branching filaments.
Lichens are nothing like mosses. Lichens are actually a bizarre partnership, in which a fungus lives together with a type of algae (or sometimes a cyanobacteria). The fungus provides a moist, safe place for the algae to live. The algae provides food for both the organisms by doing photosynthesis. Nature is so cool!
Well, as I was looking into the forest from the balcony of a cabin we stayed in for a few days, I saw this tree with something long and stringy growing on it. PHOTO THREE.
This stringy stuff is NOT Spanish moss (which grows on trees in the southeast USA and is actually a type of air plant called a bromeliad). This stuff is also not a type of moss (there are some long stringy mosses that hang from trees in the Pacific Northwest).
How do I know it's not a moss? Because when I zoomed in on it, what I saw is shown in PHOTO FOUR.
These long strands with little filaments sticking out in all directions indicate that this is a lichen called bearded lichen, or Methuselah's beard lichen. It is the longest lichen in the world, growing to twenty feet in length!
This is why I love being outdoors. Every living thing you see—if you pay attention and learn more about it—is unique and spectacular in its own way.
All photos by Stan C. Smith