Stargazing the Cosmos

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the man. He's an astrophysicist, author, lecturer, planetarium director, and the presenter of the remake of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which was on TV earlier this year (and is incredibly good). I found this awesome mural of him gazing dreamily off into space in downtown Baton Rouge last Friday when going for an after-work beer. Apparently it's part of a series of paintings by local artists which are being made into murals for buildings (http://www.thewallsproject.org), which is a cool concept, especially if the art looks as good as this!

I was lucky enough to "see" Neil deGrasse Tyson give a talk at Tulane University in New Orleans earlier this year with my labmate and friend Ganesh and his wife Sara. I use quotation marks because while we were at Tulane University, we weren't even in the same room as deGrasse Tyson. So many people turned up and waited in the rain that they couldn't fit everyone in the lecture hall, or even the overflow room, where we had to settle for watching a video feed of the lecture. The talk was titled This Just In and it was excellent. He could have had a career as either a scientist of a stand-up comedian as he has a rare ability to be simultaneously funny and informative. The lecture has made its way to YouTube and I highly recommend watching it if you desire to learn the latest happenings in the cosmos and be thoroughly entertained in the process.

Aquaman

My roommates bought me a really cool aquarium for my birthday a few weeks ago! It's just 11 litres but is large enough to be currently holding six different fish which we named: Džiber, Peeper, Monday, Killa Beez, Fireball and Galliano. 

Galliano, Peeper and Killa Beez, with Fireball in the background

Boil Up

The bounty of a hard morning

I went fishing for blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) yesterday with my friend Ray, an undergraduate student who is working for the lab over summer. In the 3:15 am darkness we left with high hopes for Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, a popular fishing spot on the Gulf Coast, two and a half hours from Baton Rouge. We were using crab traps baited with chicken and a cast net, which I can now throw decently following a bit of practice. It was a great morning but sadly we didn't catch as much as we hoped - just six crabs and a couple of pounds of shrimp. Ray kept the shrimp for his family and I kept the crabs, boiling them up Louisiana style, with some vegetables and seasoning. It was my first time cooking crabs but they turned out great!

Six crabs makes a meal

Light Trapping and Alligator Grabbing

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited along on an exciting excursion to a little town called Des Allemands, about 45 minutes southwest of New Orleans. My friend Jordan used to work for the insectarium in The Big Easy and had been asked if he wanted to go on an insect collecting trip they were organising. He asked if it was okay to bring a couple of friends and it wasn't a problem, as it's always fun to have company when out collecting. The exciting thing about this particular trip was that we were going light trapping; this is where you set up a mercury vapour lamp beside a big white sheet at sunset, then sit and watch as a great diversity of weird and wonderful bugs accumulate during the next few hours.

For those wondering, the insects are attracted to the very bright light by mistaking it for the moon, which they use to navigate by keeping it at a consistent angle over one wing or the other. As they fly past the much closer lamp, this angle rapidly changes, eventually causing them to spiral ever inwards to the light.

The sheet covered in bugs

This was my second time out light trapping, having done it once before with Lincoln University back home in New Zealand. But here in Louisiana the insects are larger, more colourful, much more diverse, and more exciting due to the dangers of being stung, bitten, or sprayed with some sort of foul-smelling chemical. It was a lot of fun hanging around at the light and collecting whatever insects people were particularly interested in. We also all learnt a lot, thanks to the organizer Zack, who was an encyclopedia, naming many of the insects we saw to genus or species. 

Grabbed this guy right out of the water (photo: E. Baldwin)

As a distraction to the main goal of observing and collecting cool insects, the land owner Gordon was nice enough to take us out in his boat for a tour of the swamp. For 30 minutes we cruised along the bayous, forever reminded of the presence of the many alligators by the red glow of their eyes reflecting the light of our headlamps. Gordon challenged us to pick up a small alligator (1-2 years old) straight out of the water with our bare hands! He taught us that to do this safely you have to grab them right behind the jaws so they can't twist back to bite you. My heart was pounding as I went in for the grab on my alligator, and it almost got me when I grabbed it slightly too far back. Once caught it was easy to hold, and if you turn them upside down they get dizzy, fall asleep, and you can tickle their belly. We also spotted all sorts of other wildlife including creepy spiders, a green tree snake, and a few different frog species. It was a real privilege to hold a baby alligator and get to go on the trip. On top of all that, I also managed to add a number of really cool specimens to my own personal insect collection.

The bounty from the collecting trip; a collection of beetles, moths, bugs, and a mantispid fly

Southern Fried Cricket

Learning the trade with my sister

Anyone who knows me well would say I love to watch cricket. It would have to rank as my favourite live sport, alongside watching the mighty All Blacks do their thing. It's been awesome to watch the Black Caps over the last 18 months as they've gone from strength to strength, culminating in winning their last three test match series (hopefully they can also win the decider against the West Indies). I've also played a lot of cricket since I was around six years old; turning out for Sumner Cricket Club during primary school, playing a bit at Christchurch Boys High School, and then donning the colours of the legendary Addington 4A (the photo below says it all about the good times had with that team). My batting technique has been described as most akin to Chris Martin's, but I bowl decent left arm medium inswing with good bounce thanks to my lanky frame.

Addington 4A

In Baton Rouge, cricket is surprisingly thriving. In fact, it even drew enough attention for a visiting New Zealand reporter to write an article about it, published in the Waikato Times (thanks to my Aunt and Uncle in Hamilton for chasing down the printed paper for me!). Cricket's popularity here is largely driven by the South Asian students and community associated with LSU, specifically those from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It's primarily played in the large LSU parking lots, and real bats are used in combination with yellow kiwi cricket stumps, and a slightly heavier than usual tennis ball, made specifically for cricket (like an old school incrediball, but sadly it doesn't swing). Innings are usually 12-20 overs each with slightly modified rules played, like no lbw or leg byes.

The Waikato Times article on Baton Rouge cricket (click to enlarge)

Some or my best friends here in Baton Rouge are Nepalese so I play with them every couple of weeks or so. Abilities range from the very talented - by that I mean they could make the Addington 4A team - down to guys who have barely played before, but the games are always competitive and a lot of fun. The overall quality of play is pretty good and there's also great banter between the guys, even if I can't speak or understand a word of what is sometimes being said.

Teams from different countries don't seem to play against each other all that often, but I once had the honour to play as a Nepalese import player in a T20I against Bangladesh. We came out with a good upset victory, but my friend Asim tells me Nepal has been hammered a couple of times by the Indian team in the past - maybe we can change that soon!

Nepal (batting) vs Bangladesh

This past couple of weekends some of the guys organized the Baton Rouge Nepalese Cricket League, which was essentially a tournament between three Nepalese teams (nine players per side), selected using the style of an IPL auction. It was decided to play this tournament on the grass of the LSU parade grounds (LSU Oval) so there could be proper fielding. However, playing without a rolled pitch meant the bounce could be variable, with some balls keeping low and others rearing at your head off a good length.

The first Saturday consisted of three games of 10 overs an innings, where each team played the other two, with the top two teams qualifying for the final to be played the next weekend. My team, the Baton Rouge Tigers (BRT), bowled out La La Chha Chha Moj Gar Moj Gar (LLCCMGMG - literal translation "ok ok you got it, have fun have fun") for just 44 runs in the first game (yours truly bowling 3-1-1-11). But we failed to chase the total down, losing too many wickets and playing out too many dot balls on the tricky wicket. LLCCMGMG (the favourites) then won their second game against Baby Doll Mein Sone Di (BDMASD - literal translation "I'm a baby doll made of gold"), scoring 68 runs and defending it without much hassle. In a virtual semifinal we put in another good performance, bowling out BDMASD for a paltry 37 (My figures were 2.2-0-2-8), and chasing it down with 9 wickets and 10 balls to spare. The final promised to be a tight and gripping contest.

LSU Oval

The final format was 15 overs per team, and it was a damp morning when we lost the toss and were put in to bat. We lost wickets steadily, scraping through to a score of just 53, which we still considered defendable (we'd bowled out both teams in the previous games for 44 or less). Coming out to bowl all fired up we took three wickets in the first two overs. LLCCMGMG's middle order then put on a couple of good partnerships and we knew we'd have to bowl them out to win. We managed to keep the pressure on with a couple of big breakthroughs and it came down to 8 needed off the last over. The first ball was pushed to our captain Sudh at cover who fittingly completed the run out as the batsmen set off for a suicidal single, sparking wild celebrations for the Baton Rouge Tigers! I finished with figures of 4-0-2-11 and scored 3 runs batting at number seven. The tournament was a privilege to be a part of and the organisers did an incredible job.

The game of cricket is alive and well here in the south, and I'm loving it.

The finalists posing after a hard fought battle

Love Bugs

These fancy little insects are known as two-lined spittlebugs (Prosapia bicincta) and belong to the family Cercopidae, commonly called the froghoppers or spittlebugs - those frothy masses of bubbles you sometimes see on plants are probably caused by relatives of these guys. I spotted these two mating on a stem of Phragmites australis in our common garden today. The different colours of their lines really stands out well using the Instagram filters, despite only being taken using my Samsung Galaxy S3.

Aphids and Syrphids

This is the first of my (hopefully many) Instagram updates. I was working in our common garden today when I noticed these colonies of red aphids on a weedy plant in one of our pots. While trying to get a decent photo I noticed a couple of different hoverfly species ovipositing (laying eggs) near the aphids. Hoverflies belong to the family of flies named Syrphidae, and their larvae are common aphid predators; adults mostly feed on flower nectar and pollen. I managed to identify this particular species of hoverfly as Toxomerus politus (thanks to the great website of Bugguide) but I can't confirm the aphid or host plant species from the photographs I have.