This little-understood shrub in the Daphne family fuels curiosity among its small network of fans: scientists, horticulturists and environmentalists.
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Latifat Apatira is a botanical nature printmaker based in the Bay Area. As a physician who nearly became a botanist, the power of her creativity lies at the intersection of her passions and identities. Describing herself first as a Muslim-woman, this identity punctuates all the others: artist, daughter, sister, Nigerian-American, educator, plant person, and botanical activist. The many themes that make up her life’s work—faith and spirituality, the rich history of nature printing, botany, ethnobotany, and art—come together to form the whole of her creative work.
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Around 9:00 p.m. during falcon fledging season, Craig Nikitas got a call from the San Francisco Fire Department asking him to come to Fire Station 35 on the pier. When he arrived, firefighters handed him a soaking-wet peregrine falcon fledgling in a box. She had been found grounded along the Embarcadero.
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It’s ten minutes before sundown at the Yolo Bypass in Sacramento Valley. Corky Quirk, founder of NorCal Bats, is standing at the base of the west levee with her tour group as I-80 traffic rumbles across the causeway bridge overhead. Corky flips on her bat detector. The handheld device picks up the high-frequency soundwaves of bats’ echolocation calls and lowers the pitch to be within the range of human hearing.
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Waking up every two hours to feed an orphaned newborn bat pup, providing emergency maternal care for a hoary bat giving birth to breech twins, or grooming sleek bat fur with a mascara brush are all routine parts of life for JoEllen Arnold, a retired teacher, who is a bat "rehabber," and conservation advocate.
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It's a typical summer morning at the lagoon. The air is filled with a strange dinosaur-like soundtrack as the continuous sound of babbling and squawking travels across the water. It's nesting season for a co-mingled flock of snowy and great egrets who have taken over several Monterey pine trees at the water's edge. Beneath the trees, Cindy Margulis is checking on the birds.
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The unmistakable buzz of beating wings rushing in and high pitched song call attention to the tiny bird. But when it comes to watching hummingbirds, moments happen in the blink of an eye.
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Bianca Ana Chavez is a botanical artist living and working in Japan. She grew up in the Monterey County countryside surrounded by six acres of chaparral and a kitchen garden.
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