Peter Godfrey-Smith's Blog

Yesterday on a walk near Lake Tahoe (around where Alpine Meadows meets the Granite Chief Wilderness), I came across two coyotes. I saw the first about 100 meters away, trotting over the granite. Without much evidence, I’ll describe her as a female (see the notes). She paused to look at me…

.. and moved on, threading in and out of bushy areas and gullies.

Here is the scene – this is the first photo again, without cropping in so much.

The coyote is lower right.

Then I saw, some way behind her, ...

A late afternoon dive in June at the Bower, Cabbage Tree Bay (NSW, Australia): Gorgeous conditions, slight milkiness, but about 12 meters visibility. Flat as a pancake.

I headed to my usual areas. Saw nothing much, so I went slowly, with some surface swimming, towards Shelley Beach, where I had heard there was some giant cuttlefish activity. From the surface I saw a medium-to-large cuttlefish in a three-quarters pose, hovering. I went down and, because my buoyancy wasn’t great (big suit and sma...

I went for a dive back in February at Fly Point (Nelson Bay, Australia). Much of it was fairly murky and uneventful, but (as I tell myself over and over): you never know what you’ll see.

As I was beginning the last stages of the dive over on the west of the site, I came across a bowl-like orange sponge oriented horizontally. Two of the most beautiful banded shrimp were sitting in the bowl, facing out. Both looked small. Young? They were lively and seemed interested in everything. One kept doing...

I went to Rwanda in 2022 to see the mountain gorillas, who I expected to write about in Living on Earth. It was a short visit, less than a week, but the country made a strong positive impression on me. I decided to write something about it, and began doing background reading. Rwanda has been in the news quite a lot over the last few years, first due to the former UK government’s plan to send asylum seekers there, now because of the outbreak of Marburg virus. The UK controversy was accompanied b...

The Finke River has its headwaters west of Alice Springs, Central Australia. It intersects with a famous hiking trail, the Larapinta. I recently walked some parts of that trail with a group that moved pretty fast. I could see that the Finke was a remarkable place, especially for birds. In particular, some of the trees seemed alive with budgerigars, the small yellow-green parrots kept all through the world now in cages. Budgerigars live wild through much of Australia, and I’d encountered them in...

The photo above is from the end of the story.

I was watching a lyrebird in a full male display, singing with feathers overhead. This was in the undergrowth (off the Prince Henry Walk in Katoomba), and I was slowly edging in to get closer, also fiddling with the camera.

I heard a small sound nearby, and suddenly a fox, bright orange and quite large, appeared and lunged at him.

The lyrebird leapt up, and in a sequence of flying hops, got up onto a tree branch.

I was surprised at how far ahead of...

Thirty years ago I was living in San Francisco, scheduled to give a talk at U.C. San Diego, and on the way to SF airport I found myself thinking there was no need to deal with airports that day, and decided to drive on to San Diego. I gave the talk and had several days to drive back up. I came inland and made my way to Sequoia National Park, not the first time I’d been there but the first time in spring.

I remember that trip especially for dogwoods blooming below the giant sequoias – the most m...

Thoughts from a murky dive at the “Pipeline” site in Nelson Bay, after a couple of months away.

I’d left it, in late February, with a lot of octopuses in residence. I was coming across six or eight on each dive (probably more), and a lot of behaviors. Now, with the water cooling down, I wanted to come back and see what was happening. I think these octopuses become less active after March or so, certainly by the winter (with exceptions). At Jervis Bay’s “Octopolis” site, seasonal differences hav...

This post describes a dive at the “Pipeline” site, Nelson Bay, in late February. It’s not science, and not a dramatic tale, just 90 minutes or so of octopus behavior – one brief period in their complicated lives.

Dive conditions were good. I headed a little to the north-east, exploring. I came across a cluster of octopuses. The first had a good den with a bottle nearby (as they often do), and was very watchful. He’ll be “Bottle Octopus,” or O1.

He was arranged with shells around, peering out, a...

This is a video (one minute) of a male Superb Lyrebird doing some calls that imitate other birds, and being answered by some Laughing Kookaburras in nearby trees.

(I am pretty sure the kookaburras were authentic, not more mimics, as they were quite high in the trees.)

I’ll do some research and have a try at listing the other birds the lyrebird was mimicking.

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