HOLY
TOLEDO, BUCKAROO!!! IT'S THE RICKUBISCAM PAGE !!
(sometimes
known as the "rick, don't touch that!" page.)
A
FRIENDLY REMINDER: ALL IMAGES, VIDEOS, AND TEXT ON THIS
PAGE, AND ALL MY PAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY
NOT BE USED ANYWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION
FROM ME.
Images
and
contents on this page copyright © 2001-2024 Richard M.
Dashnau
LAST
UPDATE: 01/13/2025 PREVIOUS
UPDATE: 01/11/2025
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--LET'S SEE WHAT THAT RASCAL RICKUBIS IS UP
TO!
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DOES THE CAPTION SAY "IT'S
LIVE"? IF IT DOESN'T, IT ISN'T.
(Actually, it hasn't been "live' in a long, long time.)
Recent Updates of other pages:
Page or file name
Date of update
Description of update
Osprey
page
12/23/2024
Added 30
pictures of an Osprey observed feeding at Fiorenza park on 02/10/2024.
Gar page
(garfish)
12/02/2024
New material from this year. Lots of images, and
some edited videos.
Gar
page (garfish)
12/01/2024
NEW PAGE!! With some much material, the gar fish have a separate page,
pulled from material I've posted on other pages.
Kites page
10/16/2024
NEW PAGE!! Inspired to create
this page because Kites aren't exactly like other
raptors...so they got their own page.
Water Insect page
10/11/2024
NEW PAGE!! Inspired to create this page
due to research I've just done. First time uploads of OLD
pictures, and new materials.
Just
Rick page
09/26/2024 Added
new videos and photos from 2003, driving an ARGO ATV to crush
vegetation at Brazos Bend State Park
Alligator Behavior
Walking etc. page 10 09/05/2024
New Page!
Added new posts with imagery from 2023
Rick's General Oddities
08/27/2024 Added
new video and pictures from August 11 and 20 2024 (long camera
sticks).
Internal Martial Arts page
07/30/2024 Added
new video and pictures from July 2024 (a few days before Beryl).
Piper the Pup's Page
06/19/2024 Added
some pictures and a couple videos from June 2024.
Ichnology page 4
05/04/2024 Added
more material from summer 2023. Cicada killer drama.
Osprey page
03/21/2024 Added a
lot of pictures and a video clip of an Osprey observed feeding at
Fiorenza park 05/29/2023.
Rick's General Oddities
12/13/2023 Added some
pictures and a video of me tossing boomerangs at Scobee Field.
Rick's
3D model Page 5 (gator den; ver. 2) 07/04/22
I
once
used Solidworks at work. Now Solidworks has access I can use at
home, so I'm modeling an alligator den. My attempts are here.
Rick's 3D model Page 1 (gator den) 05/27/22 I once used Solidworks at work.
Now Solidworks has access I can use at home, so I'm modeling an
alligator den. My attempts are here.
2008 2010
Videos of folding bicycles from 2008 & 2010
Update
01/13/2025 -
01/12/2025
BBSP had
been very dry 2022 - 2024, with some
of the lakes completely dry for up
to a few months before getting some
water in the
winter, then drying again.
Limpkins appeared in the park around
2021, and were active there until
spring of 2023. They weren't around
much after that summer. Rain
after
Hurricane
Beryl
partially
restored some
of the lakes,
and Limpkins
began calling
from within
the area soon
after. This
morning, a
Limpkin
appeared in
almost the
same spot
where I'd
found the remains of a Apple Snail a
week before.
I'd hoped to
see the Limpkin eat what it had
caught, but it flew off when some
park visitors came down the hill
behind me. I shot one photo, and
some video. The prey looks
like a snail, but even with
close examination of the images, I
can't be sure. Video of this
Limpkin is here. Earlier
photos and videos of Limpkins are on
My Limpkins Page.
The morning
was chilly (I didn't think to take a
temperature reading). About 30
minutes later,near the Observation
Tower, I found an alligator avoiding
the cold air by only
exposing its nostrils while it
breathed.
The only
reason I'd found it for this set of
images was because I'd seen it
surface once already. Otherwise, I
would have never noticed the
alligator. It was a
wonderful
demonstration of how alligators deal
with cold weather.
Update
01/13/2025 - 01/05/2025
At BBSP, just as I got to the West edge of
40 Acre Lake and Pilant Lake (both on either side of the 40 Acre Lake
Trail) I found this empty
Apple Snail shell. The first image below is facing the "hill" and the
far end of my walking stick marks the snail shell. By itself, it may
seem like just an empty shell. But, this
was obviously a fresh kill. There were 3 major components left in a
tight arrangement that shows some interesting features.
In
the dim morning light, the pink object was prominent. That is
the "albumen gland", the organ where eggs are produced by a female
Apple Snail. The organ, like the eggs,
is toxic. Therefore, it was discarded by whatever had eaten the snail.
Next to that was a dark, oval, flat object-which reminds me of a giant
guitar pick. That was the snail's
operculum-a structure that the snail used like a door to seal off the
open end of its shell. And finally, there was the large snail
shell--which was intact, and without holes
pierced in it. Whatever had eaten the snail had left these objects
(plus another pink part shown in the second image above) in the neat
arrangement. Raccoons, and
birds
called Limpkins, have both been documented
eating Apple Snails and discarding these parts. I couldn't find any
footprints or other signs in the area that helped me
guess what had eaten the snail. Both Raccoons and Limpkins live in the
park. There's more info about the snails on my Apple Snail page.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Certain
natural
observations that first appeared on this page have been moved
to my other pages. Go back to my home page, Welcome to Rickubis.com for links to those pages.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update
01/11/2025 - 06/16/2024
Sometimes, the American Bullfrog (Lithobates
catesbeiana) are chorusing where I can see them. Even so, it can
be hard to focus on the one that
decides to call. I got lucky on this day. The frog's ear is the circle
behind the eye. In males, the circle is much larger than the eye. That
circle is the ear drum, and the raised area in the middle
is a thickened pad. After the first two images, the
remaining photos are frames from video filmed at 480fps. In
those images, we can see a lot is going on in the water around the
frog.
Wonderful acoustic signatures become clear. The edited video shows the Bullfrog calling at
normal frame rate, then two slower frame rates.
Water
droplets are dancing off the sides of the frog, and circular wave
patterns seem to emanate from throat and sides. The slowed video shows
that there is also something happening
with the ears. Recording cyclic activity with video can be tricky. If
the video frame rate is the same as the movement cycle, then no
movement is visible since each frame shows the
object in the same place. So I cropped the video and slowed
playback to 24x. Then I could see pulsation of the ear drums
(tympanic membranes (TM)); and the separate circular wave
patterns crossing each other.
Although the male Bullfrogs have an eardrum at least 50% larger than
females', they don't hear better. "Function of the sexually dimorphic
ear of the American bullfrog"
(Werner et. al. 2009) suggests the big pad in the middle acts as a
damper to offset the larger membrane size. So why are the
males' ears bigger? "Tympanic sound radiation in the
bullfrog" (A.P. Purgue 1997) suggests that the ears are resonators to
amplify sound. So the larger ears don't help males hear
better--they help then sound better...or louder.
There is more bullfrog material on my Bullfrog Page.
03/07/2021 Sometimes, one of the park gators
seems to say:
Just pay
attention to the sign, okay?
04/08/2012---Easter Sunday at BBSP
gets very busy. This year, I had time to put a camera on my bicycle
handlebars and do a quick ride on the Elm Lake Trail before it got
busy. I was
experimenting with doing "virtual" trail tours of the park.
I'm not sure if this works or not, but here is an edited
version of the footage I filmed. A surprise unique to the park
happens near
the 6:47 mark. Links to the video are here (files are about 200mb):
Elm
Lake trail mp4 .
11/06/2013---Piper
the
Pup 
now has
her own page. For Piper-related stuff, you can go here,
but I don't update often.
Pages that show where mom gator has left babies, possibly so
she can forage: 03/06/2016 03/14/2016 12/05/2021
and two times when a mom left after a bellow bout:
02/16/2020 08/28/2022
I have created all the content on *my* pages. That means that I have
either shot the video, taken the pictures, or performed any
demonstrations. That also means that I've edited every image on
these pages, that is, I've cropped,
enhanced, resized, labeled, and otherwise optimized *every*
single image on my pages. That means that I've also edited,
enhanced, extracted images from, recoded (in two or three or four
formats) every *video clip* on these
pages. I've also, for better or worse, composed all the text and
layout on these pages. I've had to learn to use the various
utilities for doing all of this, as well as finding and legally
getting copies of them in the first place. I'm also
responsible for all the hardware used to do this. I also pay
for the server space used for all of this information as well as for
my access to it. It costs a lot of money, time, and effort to put
these pages out here...hopefully to
entertain and to inform. And this is *after* I spend time at my "day
job". People are welcome to the information here, but if it's
used elsewhere, then I deserve credit for my effort. If it is used
for someone else's profit, then I
deserve part of that profit. *That* is the purpose of my notices
about copyright.
I'VE USED MUSIC IN SOME OF MY VIDEO
PRODUCTIONS AND CLIPS. IT HAS BEEN LICENSED FOR MY USE, ROYALTY-FREE.
IF YOU'D LIKE TO PURCHASE LICENSED MUSIC--FROM A HUGE
STOCK OF AVAILABLE TYPES--FOR A VERY REASONABLE PRICE (HEY,
EVEN I CAN AFFORD IT) THEN YOU CAN GO TO:
-------------------------------------------------------------
CLICK
ON THE IMAGE, OR CLICK HERE
TO GO THERE. I'VE BEEN BUYING MUSIC FROM THEM SINCE 2003.
DO NOT EVER APPROACH ALLIGATORS. THEY CAN BE EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS IF THEY FEEL THREATENED, JUST LIKE ALMOST ANY ANIMAL.
DON'T DISTURB ALLIGATORS AT THIS PARK, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.
For the story of my hip
replacements, click here. I've come to think that these pages are
less about me than what I'm writing about, but I've been talking to lots
of old folks (like me) that
wonder how that surgery works.. So, this page shows my experiences with
it.
.Click here for the RICKUBISCAM GALLERY! ----a
chronicle of past rickubiscam images (16 pages starting
from the year 2000!!)
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---
RICKUBISCAM on the RICKUBISCAM on
the RICKUBISCAM on
the....
REPTILE
GLASSES
This gif was made in 2011 (I had more
hair!)
This gif was made in 2011 (I had
more hair!)
This page was born 9/16/1999. Rickubis
designed it. (such as it is.)
Go
back to my home page, Welcome to
Rickubis.com
I'm
on Mastodon for now, but I was never very active on "social"
media.
How many
come by to see the RICKUBISCAM ? Well, lets look at the counter
provided by: WEBCOUNTER.
Counter started June 18, 2001. 1/10/2012
= 10473 || 3/25/2014 10904 || 11/19/2015
= 11137 || 2/16/2017 =
11326 || 6/16/2019 =
11678 || 6/21/2020=11856 || 12/27/21=12199
|| 2/3/2022=12237 || 7/22/2022 12404 || 01/09/2023=12651
7/26/2023=12926 || 12/1/2023=13059
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