Please tell me what you're most enjoying about these sketchbooks so far and what you'd like to see more of.   🙂

Cattails at Neary Lagoon, more examples of extant models from plants alive in the Late Devotion.
This monoecious monocot likes the muddy marshland.

I'm worried sick about my baby newts. After a month of searching for them, they got stuck in the mail over Veterans day, so now they've been in transit for four days instead of two. They arrived this afternoon. They don't move and I can't see them breathing. I thought they were dead and started crying. But after sitting with them for about an hour, one's leg twitched. The woman in Utah who hatched them says that they might be dehydrated and not dead because their metabolisms are slow and their tucked in limbs could be a sign that they are trying to conserve moisture. So now I'm attempting to resuscitate baby newts with a saline spray, the same way you'd get IV fluids at a hospital, and waiting.

I’m doing research for palaeontology comic at the moment. Since it’ll be set in the Late Devonian, I’m looking closely at extant models for the plants that were alive then. This one, Equisetum, is a vascular plant that reproduces by spores, I did a close-up here of a strobili, the spore-bearing reproductive structure.

Santa Cruz, CA 11/11/11

While I was sitting in the lagoon and sketching, I was visited by a pair of American Coots (Fulica americana). They hung out in the water next to me and occasionally made a noise like a cross between a barking dog and a bicycle crash, trying to get my attention. They wanted my sandwich. I wanted my sandwich. Besides, you're not supposed to feed the wildlife… these little friends were persistent though. They sat with me for three hours. Staring, with beady red eyes. In case you haven't seen a Coot, they are small water birds about the size of a duck, with jet black feathers and white bills that look like they forgot to cover-up part of their skeleton. Very cool new friends. Despite the startling squawking, I enjoyed their company.

Neary Lagoon, Santa Cruz CA
11/8/11