#bagels asks

Wanna attack some ghost pigeons?

As someone who also appreciates weird small things and organizing them, I thought you might be amused by HORG, the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group, who for quite some time have been using citizen-assisted science to identify and classify things like bread clips and twisty strips and the like, and teach about taxonomy in a fun way. They are very straight-faced about it and extremely entertaining. I emailed them once about a neat bread clip and asked if the extra sticker stuck to it was a parasite, a symbiont, rare plumage, a tracking method (like banding birds on the leg) or some unusual adaptation. They said they'd never seen one quite like it before. They are very pretend-serious about it and it is actually a really cool and accessible way to teach, and they actively solicit information and images, and you can mail in your specimens as well. Thought you might enjoy it! I started a small bread clip collection because of it.

It's at HORG.com, if you want to poke around. You could probably identify your favorite occlupanids!

Also, HORG is just objectively a hilarious name.

i am not sure if you want these type of asks so if you don’t want to encourage these you can ignore this. When i first saw your blog i genuinely was so happy because basically my whole life i was told the things i keep were garbage (some are but garbage in a good way). Here is a small sample of my treasure:) never had an outlet to show these off or see others collection so im glad i found your blog.

Usually I won’t pick up objects bigger than my fist, there are of course always exceptions but that’s generally my size limit. Here’s two examples:

One is a plastic tube (I tried to put a shell for comparison) which was definitely bigger than my first and wouldn’t have fit in my box at home. The other was the sole to a shoe that might have fit in my box but didn’t fit length wise (and I didn’t fancy folding it) in my bag. I don’t measure it with my fist ofc in the moment I just go off vibes, (like do I really want to carry this big thing home?) but often the vibe is the same size of my first.

For small I think about if it’s significant enough, which sounds kinda evil actually now that I’m thinking about it. This star I didn’t pick up (washer for size) but I did pick up a tiny red rock bc it caught my attention and wouldn’t let go. Smaller than that and I probably wouldn’t even see it at all so that’s my minimum I guess lol.

I would love a metal detector but I don't live near places where I could use it. Although I do live like an hour away from the ocean so maybe the beach? Unfortunately I feel like I wouldn't use it enough to justify getting one yk?