Weekly World Facts - A Day Off Track

Hello, I return today to give you this week's Weekly World Facts. You might have noticed I did not call it Wednesday's Weekly World Facts. That would be because 1. it is not Wednesday anymore. 2. I did say - A Day Off Track at the end so that might give you a clue. Basically, I did not make this yesterday so I am creating it today. But enough of my rambling, I must get on. Last week you might remember our Question Asking Person saying this: No, wait! What about my last question? The Biggest Country question? You have to answer that! Of course, I did not answer that question (on purpose). I promised I would answer it this week (on Wednesday) so I am going to have that one be the first question answered. Read on now to see this week's Weekly World Facts!

Finally you are going to let me ask this! Now tell me what the biggest country is... please?
I know you are going to be mad because I made you wait so long but the biggest country is... (drum roll please) Russia! You thought I would name a place you probably never heard of before? Well, all of those places are tiny. If you are wondering, Russia's national animal is the Russian Bear and Russia is known for very long, cold winters.

Okay... I have seen pictures of Hummingbirds but what is so special about them?
Hummingbirds are really cool for many reasons. First of all, a humming bird can flap its wings up to 70 times per second, and it does not flap up and down like most. A hummingbird will flap in a figure-eight style with its wings. Another cool thing is how many times its heart will beat in a second. A hummingbird's heart will beat on average 1,260 times per second. Isn't that fast? One thing I like about hummingbirds is that they are so small and colorful. They are no more than 8 inches long, and they do not weigh any more than .7 ounces. Not to mention there is over 300 different species plus they pollinate. To the right is a picture of just one type of humming bird.

How many more questions can I ask? I don't want to but cut short again.

If I don't count that as a question - which I don't - one more. Seriously? Yes. But... Fine. Here is my final question: What is the biggest animal in the world? I am shocked you asked that. I was thinking you would ask something like: What is the rarest insect in the lowest part of the mountains of China? Well now you got to tell me that too! Maybe next week (probably not because finding that answer would be super hard). As to your question, the answer is the Blue Whale which also happens to be the biggest sea animal. They are about 100 feet long and weigh about 200 tons. An Elephant weighs 15,000 pounds and I bet you know how big Elephants are. Imagine how this would look in real life! I can't imagine anything that big. Can you tell me a size of something small? Nope, I am not letting you trick me into answering more questions. I have to save some for next week you know. If you say so...

I hope you enjoyed this week's Weekly World Facts even if it was a day off and I only answered three questions. If you don't like the questions asked by the little Imaginary Person, or you would like to ask your own, you can always ask me in a comment and I might answer in the next week's Weekly World Facts if I can find an answer to it. I am going to work on editing the Hero's Prophecy series now (while listening to original Minecraft songs on Youtube) so I will be signing off here. Be ready for next week's Weekly World Facts and of course, Minecraft Monday!



 

Nature Photos from the Past

I am here today to show you all my nature pictures I took in the past. The ones I will be showing are of mushrooms and flowers. Like yesterday I will show about five or six pictures and give a little bit of information about them.


This is one of the pictures I took in the past. Like I said in my last post, I am best at doing close up pictures of nature such as flowers and mushrooms. For all of the pictures in yesterday's and today's post I did not use any editing besides for cropping. The only one I edited was the last picture in this post. I am just really horrible when it comes to editing because I don't know how the lighting, color, and contrast should be like. In my opinion, I like pictures how they are.

This is the mushroom picture I took that I have framed in the hallway. This was taken when we were hiking and there were lots of mushrooms like this one. At first, I was taking pictures of their tops, but then my dad showed me how to do these types of pictures. One reason I like doing close-up nature pictures is because I can really catch the detail and find things small but, in my opinion, wonderful. Where I live we are sort of considered a dessert so that is why we have such extreme weather, yet there are still things like this out here.

This is another one of my really good pictures. I think this is a fungi so that is what I will call it. You can't see it, but on the top of this fungi is blue. The main purpose of this picture was to catch the small little dew drops. I took other ones too, but they only show the top or father away views. This was actually stuck to a tree, but it looked really cool. Below I show what the top looks like.

Here is the view of the fungi (if that is what it is). That is probably the most unique type of thing I found hiking. It is just so bright compared to the brown and green of the woods. It sort of reminds me of a UFO because of its shape and color layout. The blue is like a big dome window and the red and orange is like the metal part. The only things that make it different from a UFO is one, it is not really flying, and two, it is not an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

Here is something I found in our front yard once. Even though I am not an expert on plants, I know this is probably a Dortmund rose based off the shape and color. I actually just figured that out... but how? Researching. I looked up Rose Types and found one that looked like this called the Dortmund Rose. Then I looked through Dortmund Rose images on Google and that led to me deciding this must be a Dortmund rose. See? Research can be helpful, but sometimes it can take a long time. This was not one of those times.

I took this picture at a Zoo Aquarium in Seattle. I am pretty sure it was at Woodland Park Zoo, but I can't remember. This is the only one I edited out of the pictures shown. All I did was crop out some of the other sea plants like the one in the background (I could not get that one) and then let it be. Getting no shadows and getting nice angles are always the hardest to do. I often times get the camera's shadow or my shadow in the picture so I have to move where I am standing which also changes the angle of the thing. I would like to tell you what this plant is called, but I have to start my online coding class today along with Life of Fred and another coding class. After that I have chores followed by playing Minecraft or World of Warcraft, and then I will either work on sketching, music, or writing the Hero's Prophecy. Knowing Katie she won't do her time until after me because she doesn't want to do her chores. Actually... I think she already did her chores, but you might know what I mean. I'll be signing off here, and I hope you enjoyed these pictures. Remember, on Monday is Minecraft Monday and I have a feeling it will be the best one yet.

Pictures of Downtown Park Nature

A few days ago we went to the Downtown Park and I took some pictures of the seagulls, geese, plants, and flowers. In today's post I will show you some pictures of those things, explain what they are while probably straying off topic as usual.

 I am about 99.999% (repeating 9) sure this is a somewhat young seagull, but I am not an expert on birds. This was taken down near the river, so I got a lot of pictures of geese, ducks and seagulls. Since most of the pictures were not good I only show two (this one and the last one). I like this picture because it sort of looks like the young seagull (I'll just call it that) is posing like how my sister Katie would.



Here is a picture of one of the flowers I found. The camera I used is not a really good one but this picture still turned out nice. There were a lot of these flowers in 3 giant pots so I went to the one with the most sunlight. Luckily, my camera has a flower setting and macro so that helped. There were actually a few bees on a bunch of yellow flowers but none of those pictures turned out right so there is no point in showing them.


This is like the other one, but I like this flower and picture better. I was lucky enough to have the sun in the right position so in my opinion it turned out really great. I have some really cool pictures from a few years ago that I think I will show tomorrow. One of my favorite past pictures is of a mushroom I saw when we were hiking once, and I now have it framed and hanging up in the hallway. I am best at taking close-up nature pictures for some reason which is fine since I like those things the best.

I really have no idea what to call this, but it could be some sort of flower or seed of that tree. I normally don't show people things if I have no idea what to call them, but I wanted to show something besides flowers and seagulls. Washington is called the Evergreen State but we have other trees too, like this one. When I imagine the woods, I imagine pine trees but that is probably because that is what I see everyday. My favorite type of tree that I can think of is probably maples but this small one the seeds/flowers are nice too.

 Okay, for the last picture I show a different young seagull. Sadly, I don't find this one posing like the first. Unless... it sort of reminds me with my hands behind my back, walking in circles, thinking about something and talking under my breath. Yes, this is like a young seagull version of me - perfect! Hmm... I think I will be signing off here because I just noticed I have five pictures on here which is a lot. Plus the paragraphs are getting long when you add them together. I'll be signing off here, but be ready for tomorrow's post!