eiders

[eiders]

Margaret Morrison (American, born 1960)

Cristallo, 2022

Oil on canvas 108 x 84 in (274.3 x 213.4 cm)

[eiders]

🚨💔Hello, I am sorry for the inconvenience, but I must do this. Please, can you help me with any small amount? There is no house, no food, and no other necessities of life. Your donation may save a child from dying of hunger. You cannot imagine the difficulties of the life we ​​live in Gaza. 🚨💔 Is it possible for you to share my link on your sites so that people’s voice can reach people? Thank you very much ❤️🇵🇸 and I am sorry again On that 🙏🚑🚨

https://gofund.me/eb1d4499

👈🚨🚑🙏🇵🇸

#Vetted by 90-ghost

#a-shade-of-blue

freegaza#freepalestine#help#gofundlt#savepalestine

[eiders]

Orange-breasted Fruit-eater (Pipreola jucunda), family Cotingidae, order Passeriformes, Ecuador

photograph by Lior Berman (@photolior)

[eiders]

In the Willamette Valley of Oregon, the long study of a butterfly once thought extinct has led to a chain reaction of conservation in a long-cultivated region.

The conservation work, along with helping other species, has been so successful that the Fender’s blue butterfly is slated to be downlisted from Endangered to Threatened on the Endangered Species List—only the second time an insect has made such a recovery.

[Note: "the second time" is as of the article publication in November 2022.]

To live out its nectar-drinking existence in the upland prairie ecosystem in northwest Oregon, Fender’s blue relies on the help of other species, including humans, but also ants, and a particular species of lupine.

After Fender’s blue was rediscovered in the 1980s, 50 years after being declared extinct, scientists realized that the net had to be cast wide to ensure its continued survival; work which is now restoring these upland ecosystems to their pre-colonial state, welcoming indigenous knowledge back onto the land, and spreading the Kincaid lupine around the Willamette Valley.

First collected in 1929 [more like "first formally documented by Western scientists"], Fender’s blue disappeared for decades. By the time it was rediscovered only 3,400 or so were estimated to exist, while much of the Willamette Valley that was its home had been turned over to farming on the lowland prairie, and grazing on the slopes and buttes.

Pictured: Female and male Fender’s blue butterflies.

Now its numbers have quadrupled, largely due to a recovery plan enacted by the Fish and Wildlife Service that targeted the revival at scale of Kincaid’s lupine, a perennial flower of equal rarity. Grown en-masse by inmates of correctional facility programs that teach green-thumb skills for when they rejoin society, these finicky flowers have also exploded in numbers.

[Note: Okay, I looked it up, and this is NOT a new kind of shitty greenwashing prison labor. This is in partnership with the Sustainability in Prisons Project, which honestly sounds like pretty good/genuine organization/program to me. These programs specifically offer incarcerated people college credits and professional training/certifications, and many of the courses are written and/or taught by incarcerated individuals, in addition to the substantial mental health benefits (see x, x, x) associated with contact with nature.]

The lupines needed the kind of upland prairie that’s now hard to find in the valley where they once flourished because of the native Kalapuya people’s regular cultural burning of the meadows.

While it sounds counterintuitive to burn a meadow to increase numbers of flowers and butterflies, grasses and forbs [a.k.a. herbs] become too dense in the absence of such disturbances, while their fine soil building eventually creates ideal terrain for woody shrubs, trees, and thus the end of the grassland altogether.

Fender’s blue caterpillars produce a little bit of nectar, which nearby ants eat. This has led over evolutionary time to a co-dependent relationship, where the ants actively protect the caterpillars. High grasses and woody shrubs however prevent the ants from finding the caterpillars, who are then preyed on by other insects.

Now the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are being welcomed back onto these prairie landscapes to apply their [traditional burning practices], after the FWS discovered that actively managing the grasslands by removing invasive species and keeping the grass short allowed the lupines to flourish.

By restoring the lupines with sweat and fire, the butterflies have returned. There are now more than 10,000 found on the buttes of the Willamette Valley."

-via Good News Network, November 28, 2022

[eiders]

Green Summer Landscape   -  Gerhard Nordström , n/d

Swedish,b.1925-

Oil on panel, 182 x 146 cm.

[eiders]

American Bison (Bison bison), mother with rare white calf, family Bovidae, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

photograph by Erin Braaten

[eiders]

Cribraria sp. by Sarah Lloyd

[eiders]

Crab Spider, Epicadus heterogaster with Honey Bee

[eiders]

[2758/11080] Crested fireback - Lophura ...

The crested fireback has been split into the Bornean crested fireback L. ignita (top photo), and the Malayan crested fireback L. rufa (bottom photo).

Order: Galliformes Family: Phasianidae Subfamily: Phasianinae

Photo credit: Charmain Ang / Prof.Dr. Ahmet Karatash

[eiders]

[eiders]

Kunlong Wang (Chinese)

Yellow flowers, 2023

Oil on canvas

[eiders]

I am a mother of my children. I want your help to care for them. Please, I want to escape outside the country to treat my child and

start a new life away from the destruction.I have an autistic child who suffers from chronic kidney failure. I need medicines and health care, and because of the war on my city, I am unable to bring expensive medicines.I am suffering. I see my children sleeping without adequate cover or food, and skin diseases are spreading among them and me, and no one cares. I cannot buy detergents or medicine. I have a sick child with autism, who does not speak or hear, who is physically and mentally disabled, and who has kidney failure.

and Please, you are our only hope in this situation we are going through.Please, I do not have the money to buy a bag of flour for my children. We are suffering from hunger

Through your donation to us, we will find safety and meet our basic needs. Donate $10 or $20, enough to protect my family from danger. If you cannot

donate, you can republish my story through your page through your friends in my last post on my page.🍉🇵🇸 https://gofund.me/bf16d08d

[eiders]

BOTD: Great Kiskadee

Photo: Becky Matsubara

"Named for its ringing kis-ka-dee calls, this bird seems to break the rules for the flycatcher family. Besides flying out to catch insects in the air, it also grabs lizards from tree trunks, eats many berries, and even plunges into ponds to catch small fish. Its bright pattern is unique in North America, but in the tropics there are several other flycatchers that look almost identical. The Great Kiskadee is found from Texas to Argentina, and is also very common in Bermuda, where it was introduced in the 1950s."

- Audubon Field Guide

[eiders]

seumas326

[eiders]

I found a guide for a no tape, easy to unwrap wrapping tutorial to make Christmas a little more accessible, wish I just found it sooner

[eiders]

Can we please bring back the Christmas tree living room glamour shots era

[eiders]

Bornean Keeled Pit-viper (Tropidolaemus subannulatus), family Viperidae, Sabah, Borneo

Venomous.

photograph by Jesse’s Wildlife