Houses made by protists

attention to interesting aspects of natural history. In most of my research projects I try to reserve a little bit of time for taking photographs. Our projects on waterbirds are ideal for combining data collection with a bit of photography — we observe our focal broods from floating, mobile blinds, in wetlands teeming with waterbirds. With a really good blind, it’s like being invisible — we often get ridiculously close to all sorts of wildlife. In some cases we actually collect data with a camera: as coot chicks are virtually impossible to recapture within a day of hatching, I worked out a technique for obtaining accurate size measurements from photographs. I also use my photographs liberally in my teaching. The right type of photo can be used as a virtual laboratory, where students have to search for interesting patterns and come up with ecological hypotheses that can explain the patterns. As a result, I am often on the search for photographic subjects to illustrate some of the case histories I cover in class.