Hmmm, now we’re getting a handle on Covid Delta, this from WHO:
Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern
Source: World Health Organisation
Our Swan Plant had one microscopic Monarch caterpillar on it when a friend offered to bring some of her surplus caterpillars round. Of course I accepted. Hers are much much bigger.
Because I was sitting quietly on a log, the Pied Stilt came closer, checking me out.
Pied Stilt, strutting her stuff. 🐦
Saw these little birds at the beach today. Thought they were one thing, but a search eventually told me they are New Zealand dotterels. One photo has an Oystercatcher to show the relative sizes.
My brain doesn’t do well with pictures that replace words: on the cooktop it always takes me time to figure out which knob controls which element, in a lift my finger hesitates above the silly arrows for opening or closing doors. So I was interested to read about how it takes our brains longer to decode emoji than to read simple words:
New research suggests most people can easily understand an emoji when it replaces a word directly – like an icon for a car instead of the word ‘car’ – yet it takes us about 50 percent longer to comprehend the icon.
The slight delay probably exists because our minds interpret these images as pictures, not as words, the authors argue, which requires an extra step of processing.
First, our brains must recognize the image before our eyes, and then, we must match that image to a word. If we simply read a word, we get there sooner.
Source: We’re Pretty Good at Decoding an Emoji, Even When It’s Not a Perfect Match For a Word
Near the beach is a house being built from the outside in. After laying the floor they put up door jambs and installed the doors. Next come the outside walls. Usually, after the floor, framing goes up, then walls and doors go in. It’s weird…
It was stunning at the beach before 7 am today. In the photo, about one third of the way across the horizon from the right, you can just make out Mt Ruapehu.
Blackbird.
For no special reason, a photo from August 2012, at Ha’atafu resort in Tonga. Reading.
How do these adjacencies happen so often? Is this really just a coincidence? No one talks about ravens then suddenly @cheri and @hollyhoneychurch both mention them, one after the other!? What’s going on? 🤨 🕵🏼♀️
Well, well, well: Kobayashi Maru
🖖🏼📺
Misremembering Something May Be Evidence That Your Memory Is Actually Working 🤔:
people tend to remember the general gist of an item … while forgetting its fine details.
…people tend to mentally “fill in” missing details with the most frequent or commonplace properties.
The Grey warbler, Riroriro has a very distinctive song that I’ve often heard. I’d never seen the bird though until today. Very excited to report my first sighting, near our gate, and photos! This bird is even smaller than the tiny waxeyes!
Ahhhh, mystery solved. I wondered why my author friend @cheri kept leaving out words in her blog posts. Now I know to blame Reader mode on Safari, which I use because I hate reading pale text on a dark background.
Blood moon November 2021 notes
I caught some glimpses of the eclipse last night, between cloud. Just after 10 pm, it looked just like this, in binoculars. My couple of photos were garbage. so, just to remember this:
The longest partial lunar eclipse visible in New Zealand in more than 800 years … has not been seen in our skies since Kupe landed in Aotearoa 800 years ago. … While lunar eclipses happen every couple of years, the next one as long as tonight’s will not occur for another 648 years’ … in 2669
Source: Rare micro Moon eclipse expected to be visible across Aotearoa
I managed to see the almost total lunar eclipse in spite of loads of cloud. Pretty darned special, particularly with good binoculars. Took two bad photos. I wanted to focus on binocular views instead of camera fiddling tonight. 😀 Off to bed now.
Absent-mindedly opened Camera app on my phone instead of the Covid–19 Tracer app to record a visit. Camera kindly offered to open the correct app for me.
My Granny Smith apple tree should produce a good crop this year.
