Live Barn Owl Nest Cam

The most exciting thing on the internet right now. Even when she is asleep and sitting on her babies.

via india

You're not going to like this

What you're looking at here is the remains of an Albatross chick from a tiny little island called the Midway Atoll in the North Pacific, where

more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

 Look at these pictures. Found here, original post here.

This is a very moral story in pictures about what happens when you walk on people.

You get EATEN. Yes. By the cute docile guys. You get eaten.

Oops! Looking a little orange there...

This is my favourite picture of the week. Ladybirds at the seaside, and worlds side by side.
More ladybirds at the Guardian, including the really really evil ones who eat the really really good ones.

Loving earwigs

Gosh, this blog has been full of dead old guys lately, I've just noticed. Phew. Here, read this article about the sensual, passionate, feminine natures of earwigs instead.

Been off

cycling in the rain through the countryside of Cork. I had no idea that getting soaked for hours on end, monsoon soaked, tropically soaked, can be having the time of your life. I am very happy to have made this discovery.

The Black Toad

Our local pigeon

The white one. The black one approaching is probably also from the neighbourhood but I don't recognise him. In other news, I just had a brief frank exchange of views with an adult cockroach who appeared for a late night chat beside me, on the sofa.

The Toads

Instructions for an adventure

I found this on the road into the village a week or so ago, scrunched up. I de-scrunched it, and saw that it was, in fact, a series of very specific directions:

Go over new bypass heading towards the Lahinch Road
Come to roundabout on Lahinch Road
Take 1st left on roundabout
Head toward Ennis
Go 200 yards, see stone wall
Take 1st left after stone wall
And you are there.

On the word 'there' was sitting a small slug. I took this as a friendly sign. I have not yet taken the adventure. I am on another adventure, tomorrow, in another direction altogether. Please feel free to follow the directions. It does not say where to start. Best off starting where you are.

Good luck.

Eek! We ate Grandad!

So we were supposed to be the smart, cool ones, right? New theories circulating in fossil circles suggest that we hunted, killed, ate, and made jewelry out of the Neanderthals.

Now the leader of the research team says he believes the flesh had been eaten by humans, while its teeth may have been used to make a necklace.

For added colour to the evolution topic, see also here and here.

I bet there was a little interspecies breeding, nonetheless. You can see it sometimes.

Anyway, it may not have been all happy cannibalism and species war:

"We do need more evidence, but this could indicate modern humans and Neanderthals were living in the same area of Europe at the same time, that they were interacting, and that some of these interactions may have been hostile.

"This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh. But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction."

Here's a totally boring photo of a beach on a sunny day

and I bet it fills you with longing. Probably moreso if you're in Ireland today, where it is raining, relentlessly, than if you're in Texas, where it is warm/hot already, or New York, where it is heating up, or where this was taken, Barcelona, where the parrots roam wild and free.

Wonder if I could make a silk purse out of it?

Jumbo puffed pig snouts

This is one of those things you come across when looking for something else and you've just got to put it somewhere. Show others. Illuminate.

Play him off, Keyboard cat!

You can get more here.

They do this only to get what they want

This is what we're up against. Try arguing with that.

So you think nature is fragile and cannot possibly withstand human whim?

I just noticed yesterday that there are some weeds here that have pushed their way right through the tarmacadam here. The weeds are poking right through it.

Whoever thinks that human activity will indeed blight the earth's surface irretrievably, has obviously never ever met a weed like the one growing through the tarmacadam in front of this house right now.

Considerate poo

This picture speaks 'considerateness' to me. It is dog poo, neatly sitting on top of a cigarette box. Whatever way you look at it, it's considerate. I would like to meet that dog someday and give him a chewstick.

UPDATE In case you didn't notice, the poo is rocking the health safety warning. Considerate!

Octopus grass

More from the Bill and Lara story

These are again, from their first meeting. The original pic being this, of course, and click on it to see it larger. We need to talk about our feelings about these photographs, folks. Please feel free to share in the comments. I can't stop looking at the photo of these two holding each other. The sheer unmitigated joy. I am so happy they have found each other.