Could this be a pickled herring fossil? I got this fossil from my mom and don’t know anything about it’s history. It looks like the herring fish pictured on this Green River Fossil site. Though I was hoping it was something rare, fossils of this small fish are common.
The Green River Formation, located in parts of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, is one of the best places to find fish fossils in the world.
Fish sculpture on overpass in The Dalles, Oregon. Salmon and sturgeon leap and splash in churning waves in this metal artwork. This sculpture is by the exit for the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center, a sight worth seeing.
This beautiful exhibit at the High Desert Museum featured x-ray images of fish. X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out! The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES) organized the exhibit.
I am presenting them in sepia tone. The photographers at the Smithsonian showed their structure in artistic layouts.
Though I wrote down the species of the fish in each display, I decided to let the x-ray images of fish speak for themselves. The wonder of Nature.
This exhibition closes at the High Desert Museum on May 8, 2022, but it will continue travelling to other museums around the country.
Today I’m sharing a sockeye salmon 2-sided rock painting I created. On one side you see what this fish looks like when it’s spawning, and on the other side you see what it looks like at other times in its life cycle. They look SO different!
Sockeye salmon travel from the ocean to freshwater to spawn. Kokanee are a landlocked version of sockeye. If you’re lucky enough to catch one, they are especially delicious smoked.
Here’s a video of sockeye spawning in the Adams River in British Columbia, Canada. The 3-minute video, by Luke Gibson of Life of Luke, shows aerial and underwater shots of the fish. I loved his creative solution to filming underwater shots on a limited budget! A true artist will always find a way to work around obstacles.
Do you have artwork you would like to share? Include a First Friday Art tag on your post.
Rainbow Splendor is a large statue of trout jumping in downtown Troutdale, Oregon. This work is by local residents and world-renown artists, Rip & Alison Caswell. A smaller version is for sale on their website.
I immediately thought of this picture I took of a white sturgeon when I saw that this week’s photo challenge at Traveling at Wits End was Something that Doesn’t Belong.
In this photo, taken at the High Desert Museum, a young white sturgeon is surrounded by trout. It doesn’t quite fit in.
You might think this odd fish looks prehistoric and you’d be right. Sturgeon existed 200 million years ago, during the Jurassic period.
Though most sturgeon live 11-34 years, they have been known to live up to 104 years (!) They grow to an average length of 6.9 feet and sometimes grow to a length of 20 feet. The maximum weight recorded was 1,799 pounds. In fact, they are North America’s largest fish. So the fish in the picture may look small now, but it has a lot of growing to do!
Hmmm…a predominantly pink woodpecker named after a famous early American explorer and a wily relative of the crow named after his partner. That might make for an interesting bit of writing. I started to research the topic and decided to create a Lewis and Clark Critter Quiz.
Little did I know there was controversy linked to the plants and animals “discovered” on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The expedition supposedly discovered 178 plants and over 122 animals previously unknown to science. Or did they?
Other sources say they “encountered” or “reported” certain wildlife and plants. Due to discussions as to the accuracy of previously published lists, one recent list is divided into two sections: Discovered (for the first time by European Americans) and Described. Some of the flora and fauna species had been discovered in other parts of North America (or the world) prior to the time of the expedition while others had been a part of native people’s life for many years.
I am lucky to have seen many of the wildlife species that Lewis and Clark discovered and described. Many of these creatures live in and around Yellowstone National Park, which I have often visited. Here is a quiz that includes pictures of wildlife encountered on the expedition.
Did the Lewis & Clark expedition Discover them or Describe them? The answers are at the end of this quiz.
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