I encountered an interesting hashtag on the social media site Mastodon. Users are posting photos of the top shelf of their bookcases and describing the contents, discussing authors and other items. These photos are given the hashtag #topshelf.

Reference Books

What good are reference books that are never referenced? I have two Peterson guide books, but most of the time I can name the birds that visit the feeder. Even more convenient is a brilliant app for the phone called BirdNet from Cornell Labs. It identifies birds from their songs.

The guide helps with all the varieties of brownish birds, but I lump them into a category of “birds you see at the McDonald parking lot” or the birds that fly around at Home Depot. I don’t need a guide for them.

I have a books on plant identification. The one on Perennials is a favorite, notice the wear on the binding. Venomous Animal and Poisonous Plants is a volume I have for some light reading. Did you know that shrews possess a neurotoxin? Thankfully too little to be of concern to humans.

I have a few books on local nature walks which I need to put into practice.

Kindle

At some point I decided that I needed to have a Kindle. It sat on the shelf unused for so long that the battery drained. This only happens after months. Needless to say this gets little use.

Magic

The orange and green things on the left side are lightweight snakes with an invisible line attached. By cleverly manipulating the line you can create an illusion of a living creatures. They must have been this shelf for 10 years. Time to give them to my grand-nephew.

Light Sphere

I believe the plastic sphere contains those chemical lights. I think you activate it by throwing it on the pavement. I’ll add that to my “todo” list.

Resurrection Plant

To the right of the sphere is a brown clump of vegetative material. It looks a bit like a bird nest. It is a Resurrection Plant (Selaginella lepidophylla), a desert plant that can survive long period of extended drought. In the desert it blows along until it encounters some water. At that point it unfurls. I put it in a a bowl of water for this photo.

Turntable Cartridge

I’ve been wondering where this ended up. If it weren’t for this posting I never would expect to find this phono cartridge. It’s not too visible in the photo, but it’s located in front of the desiccated Selaginella on the bookshelf. Here it is in operation.

And More

There are more odds and ends on that shelf, a flashlight, some magnets, a plastic poison dart frog and inexplicably one nylon screw for a toilet seat. Why do I have these items. This is just ONE of several bookcases in the house. What do you have on your TOP SHELF?