#Blue-headed racket-tail

[arulia108]

Day 25

[marvelstoriesepic]

Soft Spot

Pairing: Roommate!Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 1.8k

Summary: Alpine is determined to gain access to your room while you are resting.

Warnings: Bucky’s conversation with a cat lol; Bucky being jealous of a cat; fluff; feelings; Bucky is a sweetheart

Author’s Note: I just needed to write a little something and this came out. Hope you enjoy! Also, I probably will be posting the next chapter of like a Phoenix tomorrow. This is a part of a series with a loose timeline, but you can also read this as a stand alone. Hope you enjoy ♡

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

“Nah, Alp, c’mon now.”

Bucky sets his mug of tea down on the kitchen counter with a quiet clink - he never used to drink tea before moving in with you, but living with you changed that.

The little white kitten Bucky and you adopted from the shelter a few months ago paws insistently at your bedroom door, tiny claws scratching against the wood. She lets out a sharp, impatient mewl.

Bucky sighs, before striding over to her hurriedly and scooping the little ball of fluff into his arms before she can make more of a racket.

“Alpine,” he warns, almost too firmly considering he is talking to a cat. “Cut it out, yeah? You’re gonna wake her up.”

The kitten wiggles in his hold, clearly unimpressed. She meows again. Loud. Indignant. Bucky huffs a laugh through his nose, shaking his head and scratching her behind her ear.

“I know, I know,” he murmurs, glancing at the closed door to your room. “Ya miss her. But she’s had a rough couple weeks, alright? Stress n' exams, you know, the whole damn deal. She needs the rest. Can’t have you climbin’ all over her like the little menace you are.”

Alpine stares at him with those big blue eyes, as if she understands every word but refuses to accept the reasoning. Another sharp meow, this time more of a protest.

Bucky sighs dramatically, shifting her into one arm and rubbing her chin. “Yeah, yeah, don’t gimme that look. I ain’t the bad guy here, buddy. Just tryna let her sleep.”

Alpine doesn’t seem to hear a word.

Before Bucky can react, the little furball twists her tiny body and slips right out of his grasp, landing softly on the floor.

In an instant, she is back at your bedroom door, paws crawling, tail flicking, and meowing like she is under torture.

Bucky groans quietly, dragging his hand down his face. “Jesus.” He crouches down, resting his forearms on his knees as he watches her.

He reaches out, rubbing slow and soothing circles on her soft white fur. “You just wanna be near her, huh, girl?” His voice is softer now. He sighs, deep and heavy, shoulders slumping. “Yeah, I get that.”

Because Alpine loves you. She doesn’t hide it - follows you everywhere, curls up in your lap, meows until you give her attention. She’s got no hesitation when it comes to showing how much she adores you.

And that is what Bucky envies.

Because Bucky loves you too. He just can’t show his affection that outright. He’s your best friend. Your roommate. And that’s the part that stings.

He would do anything for being able to show you how much he adores you without crossing the line he is afraid to.

His chest tightens long enough for him to really feel the ache and he stands up, exhaling through his nose with a resigned breath.

“Alright, you little punk,” he mutters, shaking his head as Alpine turns those blue eyes back up to him. Expectant.

Slowly, he reaches for the door handle, giving the kitten another warning glare. “Just for a quick visit, yeah? No bouncin’ on her. No wakin’ her up, got it?”

Alpine meows.

Bucky huffs, pushing the door open carefully.

The small cat whooshes past Bucky the second the door cracks open, a blur of white fur darting straight for your bed. He barely stops himself from calling out, biting back a curse as he runs a frustrated hand down his face.

Damn cat’s got a one-track mind.

But he can’t really blame her. You’re on his mind probably even more often.

He steps inside, deliberately avoiding the creaky floorboards. He’s been in your room often enough to have memorized them by now.

Alpine reaches your face and bumps her small head against yours with a high chirp before rubbing along your cheek.

You don’t stir in your sleep.

Curled up on your side toward the direction of the door, hands tucked near your face, you’re completely dead to the world, your breaths slow and even.

Bucky guesses the stress from the last weeks must have finally caught up to you because you don’t even twitch when Alpine starts licking at your fingers.

“Alpine,” he whisper-yells, stepping closer, ready to scoop the little cat up and drag her outside before she wakes you.

But Alpine starts to circle, once, then again, before settling right against your hip, tucking herself into a comfortable little ball. She lets out a soft, contented sigh.

Bucky stops in his tracks, hands on his hips, shaking his head with an amused smirk on his lips.

“You’ve got no idea how jealous you’re makin’ me right now, Alp.”

Something tugs and turns in his chest, watching the way you sleep so peacefully, completely unaware of anything. Of how easy it is for Alpine to curl up against you and claim you like it’s the most natural thing to do.

He lets out a breath, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. “Alright,” he utters in a whisper. “Guess I’ll just stand here like an idiot while you get all the cuddles.”

Alpine flicks her tail.

Bucky stands there for a moment, arms crossed loosely over his chest, just watching you.

The way your brows are at ease, your face soft and relaxed - peaceful and serene in a way he hasn’t seen in too damn long.

And oh how it calms something deep inside him.

The past few weeks had been brutal on you. It was a mess of late nights, long assignments, and that damn stubborn streak of yours keeping you from slowing down, no matter how many times he told you to.

You pushed yourself too hard - always do - and every time it drives him up the wall.

He hates seeing you stressed and he did what he could. Brought you tea, draped blankets over your shoulders when you were too caught up in your work to notice the chill. Left food by your side when he knew you’d forgotten to eat.

And you accepted it all - gave him those sweet little smiles accompanied by a thanks, Buck in that soft voice of yours that always knocks the wind out of him - but you never really listened.

Never listened when he told you that pushing past exhaustion isn’t the solution. That not having a clear head is worse than not being prepared at all.

But now you are finally resting.

For the first time in what feels like months, you are letting yourself breathe.

And Bucky feels like a weight is falling off his shoulders, a tension he was gripping finally loosening.

He exhales a deep, relieved sigh, raking a hand through his hair.

Alpine stirs slightly at your hip but stays balled up, her soft purring filling the room beside your deep breaths.

It’s then that Bucky notices the book half-tucked against your arm. You must have been reading before finally crashing, trying to quiet your mind enough to let yourself sleep.

He steps closer, cautiously, eyes flickering to your face to make sure you don’t wake up.

For a second, he worries it’s one of your damn textbooks - because if you fell asleep studying for god knows what now, he is going to have to give you some words.

But as he leans over you slightly, fingers brushing the covers and gently pulling it away from your arm, he lets out a pleased breath. Just a novel. Good.

He carefully marks the page, folds the book shut, and sets it on your nightstand.

Bucky straightens, and he knows he should walk back out - really, he should - but his eyes stay on you a little longer. He almost feels like some kinda creep just standing here, watching. But hell, he can’t help it.

You look so damn adorable with your little pout. So damn beautiful with your hair falling just so, features so soft, color in your cheeks.

His breath hitches unintentionally and his pulse skips, his heart only a trembling thing in his chest.

Taking in a deep breath, he takes a hold of your blanket and gradually tugs it up over your shoulders, up to your chin.

The fact that Alpine gets dragged along with it and the grumpy chirp she lets out gets ignored by him. She glares at him in annoyance but does not move from her spot.

“Mhm… Buck…?”

Your voice is thick with sleep, soft and drowsy, and it nearly knocks Bucky off balance. Literally. His foot catches on the floor and he stumbles slightly, heart lurching in his chest like the idiot he is.

His gaze snaps to your face. You blink up at him, slow and unfocused, brows scrunching in confusion. Eyes half-lidded, heavy with exhaustion, your voice slurring slightly.

Jesus. You’re so damn cute like this.

Bucky clears his throat, forcing himself to school his expression. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart,” he coos in a whisper, gentle and soothing. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” He shoots Alpine a pointed look, but the cat, as usual, doesn’t seem to give a damn.

You shift slightly, nestling deeper into the sheets, eyes fluttering shut again. Without thinking, Bucky brushes his hand through your hair, over your cheek in slow and soothing motions to coax you back into sleep.

You hum in contentment. That little sound does something to him, settling deep within him.

And hell - if his heart doesn’t clench at the sight of you like this. So soft, so sweet, so damn beautiful it hurts.

A lightness swells beneath his ribs. An airy flutter dances.

He focuses on the way your breathing evens out, the way your body melts back into the bed.

And when he’s sure you’ve slipped under again, Bucky lets himself lean down, lips ghosting over your temple in the lightest of touches, giving you a soft kiss. He lingers just a second, long enough to whisper against your skin, voice barely more than a breath.

“Sleep tight, doll. You better dream of me.”

And with one last glance, so full of longing, he forces himself to pull away. He lets Alpine stay with you, despite the fact that he wants to be the one who gets to do that.

But he slips out of the room as quietly as he can, shutting the door behind him with a faint click. Leaving with you the racing of his heart you caused and the ache of something he isn’t sure he’ll ever have the guts to say out loud.

“Her, because she makes life poetry, she turns every bit of it into art.”

- butterflies rising

[imiya]

Tilly & Finley Wild Manes Review

since i got a hold of these girlies lets investimigate- apologies for overexposure

first, individual pics of each of them. here's finley:

who is themed after a pool party, of course. when i bought her at target, the self checkout display called her Isla, which makes sense as a working name for her... island.

she is white with grey hooves and a muzzle. she has blue eyeshadow with green eyes and blonde eyebrows, matching her blonde hair with a purple streak.

i will color correct these photos for the wiki, but for now, here's the raw photo of her clothes

all of the clothes are unhemmed and simply printed-on fabric with two velcro connections. my finley also had a plastic tab keeping the front attatched (which i snipped so i could remove it). you can see her mermaid tail and flamingoes on her clothes. the clothing is very thin, i don't think it might fray any time soon, but it does seem lazy for a fashion horse toy. thankfully, the hair makes up for it, we'll get there later.

each of these horses came with a brush and a non-brush accessory. finley's is wearable! she has a visor made with this magenta translucent plastic. i didn't take any pictures of it on her, but it does indeed fit on her head.

she comes with this purple brush, which you can tell is hers because of the flamingo printed on it.

and now a quick tilly rundown...

she's a brown horse with a brown muzzle and hooves, red eyeshadow, yellow eyes, and blonde eyebrows. her hair is more of a dirty blonde than finley, and her color streak is described as "periwinkle". the self checkout register called her Serena, which... yeah, i can see why they may have changed that. a little on the nose.

as you can see by her brush's symbol, she's very clearly tennis-themed. her accessory is unfortunately not wearable, instead it's a water bottle with a tennis racket printed on

horse gotta hydrate

if that all wasn't clear enough, her outfit has a tennis racket on it, too! there is no hemming, the "collar" is printed on. her outfit looks like a blue polo and a teal skirt.

okay, now the part people actually wanted to see. what the heck the figures look like

it's gettin' hot in here, so take off all your clothes...

both finley and tilly have the same exact model! i assume the horses (ponies? horses. fillies?) all have the same bodies. i think i can feel a few spots where the plastic feels slightly more rubbery/pliable than the others, so i do fear we may see discoloration as time goes on.

all of the legs are articulated at the shoulder or "hip" (sorry horse fans, it's a knee or something?), but only the front left leg is articulated in multiple places.

thank you girls, finley has her leg fairly straightened out whereas tilly has it bent. i haven't noticed the joints being unusually difficult to maneuver or maintain position, which bodes well for pictures. i did have a little bit of trouble getting them to balance in my photobox (likely because the bottom bows inwards a bit), but the little extra range of motion is nice. you can also twist the joints a little bit, but not super extremely.

but can she sit?

sort of? i know horses don't really naturally "sit" very well, but she still looks goofy. her neck doesn't move forwards so it's not a very great-looking pose for her to hold, but she can balance like this on her own.

hey, look at me when i'm talkin to you

thanks. side view of her in that same pose.

her head can turn, it's on a ball join, i believe it's similar to the g4.5/g5 mlp joints but a little more restrictive. i intend to dismantle a finley for research, so ill be able to share that when the time comes. it can rotate and move up and down slightly.

more motion... one of the back legs is in a mid-walk position which made her a little awkward to balance. you can see the company name and "made in china" stamp on the inside of this leg.

it's not very clear in this image, but there's a stamp with numbers and letters on her stomach. i don't know what this means, as finley had the same code! you can also see the hooves have horseshoes with "WM" (wild manes) on them.

before we get into the manes of the wild manes, a quick little look at their eyes.

the paint looks great! it's not stippled like i've seen on a few other dolls recently. the eyes are also sculpted in, so we hopefully won't have wild misplacement like we do on the newer MLPs. they both have stars and two eye shines, and the eyelashes are the same. the only differences here are the colors.

okay. mane time.

the hair is SUPER soft. i agree with the replier who said it's Kiwi Nylon. i am very happy that the hair is so nice and hope that the others in this set are the same way! the way it's packaged in the box makes it so there are three or four rubber bands holding it in place, and it leaves the hair with the "memory" of that. i did wash and condition the hair in these photos, which also seemed to help with the small qualms i had with the hair right out of the box. it seemed a little oily and tilly had a doubled-over plug. finley didn't seem to have any rooting troubles!

all of the hair is a few rows up the back of the head with a section for bangs. you can see that they wove tilly's bangs with the longer hair that's part of her mane to hide the parting in her head, which is likely expected for a doll but a cool detail. her bangs are NOT gelled down!

here you can see five to six rows of hair on the back of the head. it's not a lot of surface area, but the hair seems thickly rooted for what it is!

here i've parted the mane on Finley so you can see the hair a little more clearly. it looks like the streaks of hair are only on the outside of the rooting.

i've been a little afraid to peel back finley's bangs lest they become unsalvagable, but here's finley's bangs peeled back.

there's still a few rows here. when i dismantle her, hopefully i can showcase her rooting pattern more clearly.

i think that's all the pictures i've taken of them so far... i got these girls at Target, and you can order them as well as Bailey and Cocoa off their site right now! i'll be updating the fandom wiki with pictures of the accessories and hopefully the rest of the girls are as high quality as these ones!

[rebeccathenaturalist]

How to Identify Cedar Waxwings

Originally posted on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/how-to-identify-cedar-waxwings/. Click here to learn more about the How to Identify article series.

Name: Cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrodum)

Range and typical habitat(s): North and Central America from Canada to Costa Rica, from coast to coast throughout range. These migratory birds are only found in most of their Canadian range during the breeding season; the northern portion of the United States may see them year-round, while their wintering-only grounds include the southern half of the U.S. and all points south of that.

They prefer wooded or semi-open areas with plenty of trees and woody shrubs. These offer plenty of shelter, as well as the fruits that are the mainstay of their diet. While they are abundant in the wild, they will also reside in suburban and urban areas that have sufficient greenspace. This adaptability means their numbers have remained relatively stable, compared to other species whose populations have been shrinking in recent decades.

More info under the cut.

Distinguishing physical characteristics:

Size/Shape/Proportions – Total length generally 5.5 – 7 inches. They are of medium build, neither particularly slender nor stocky, with typical songbird proportions and a slender beak making up approximately 40% of the skull length. The tail is of medium length and makes up about 25% of the entire length of the bird. The head features a crest of feathers that may be raised with excitement. The tip of the tail is squared off, and in flight the wings are somewhat triangular with a pointed tip.

Colors – These striking birds are a beautiful light brown on the head and breast that almost appears to have a slight pink tint in the right light; the upper part of the body is gray, though the boundary between gray and brown on each bird may vary. The wings and tail are gray, sometimes with brown “shoulders” on the upper part of the wings when folded. The belly is decidedly yellow, while the underside of the tail is white.

Adult cedar waxwings have a black mask stripe over the eyes that wraps up toward the crest, and has fine white lines above and below it. The throat just below the beak is also dark. A good look at the tips of the secondary wing feathers reveal the red spots that look like drips of candle wax, giving the bird its name; some birds may lack these spots. The tail feathers are also tipped, but in bright yellow, though they may be orange if the bird has excessively eaten the berries of invasive honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.) species.

A juvenile cedar waxwing’s coloration differs significantly from that of the adults.

Juvenile cedar waxwings are less brilliantly colored, tending toward a brownish-gray body and head with a white belly, and the facial mask is less extensive. They won’t get their crest or red wingtips until adulthood.

Behaviors – Cedar waxwings are delightfully social birds, and having a flock of them descend on a bush of berries in winter is a treat to watch. Even during breeding season they will nest close to their waxwing neighbors. Their courtship rituals are also adorable, involving hopping back and forth, passing a little gift of food between each other. They raise one to two nests of young a year, each clutch consisting of anywhere from 2-6 babies that have hatched out of light blue or gray eggs, sometimes with darker gray spots.

These birds are primarily frugivorous, subsisting on berries and other fruit throughout the year. However, during warmer months they’ll also supplement their diet with insects and other small arthropods. (Native plants are a great way to provide them with both types of food.) They require wooded and shrubby areas to find food and nesting sites, and are quite tolerant of human activity. People nearby may hear the waxwings’ high-pitched trilling and whistling calls; flocks of the birds can create quite a racket of twittering sounds.

In spring it is not uncommon to find cedar waxwings intoxicated by fermented berries from the previous year. As with humans, this can cause uncoordinated movement, and they may injure themselves flying into trees, buildings and other solid objects.

Movement – Waxwings often fly in large groups with swift, short wingbeats similar to that of common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). When foraging they will hop from branch to branch, swallowing berries whole, and picking off convenient insects when present. They are also known to hunt insects over water, skimming and swooping like swallows.

Other organisms it could be confused with and how to tell the difference: The Bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) is almost exactly alike in appearance as the cedar waxwing. However, it is a little larger, and lacks the cedar’s yellow coloration, instead having a gray belly; the brown coloration is limited primarily to the head and neck, and cinnamon under the tail. Look at the folded wing of a Bohemian waxwing, and you’ll see a white stripe that is missing from a cedar’s wing.

Bohemian waxwing

The tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) is also a small gray passerine bird with a crest of feathers on the head, but it is significantly smaller than the waxwings. It has a gray head, back, wings and tail, sometimes with a slight brown tint, and a white belly. The sides are rust-colored, though these may extend over most or all of the breast and belly in some individuals. Titmice lack the black mask of the waxwing, and have white on their face and throat. They also do not have the red and yellow tips on their flight feathers.

Tufted titmouse

Further Reading:

All About Birds – Cedar Waxwing

Audubon Field Guide – Cedar Waxwing

ABC Bird Library – Cedar Waxwing

Birdweb – Cedar Waxwing

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

[herpsandbirds]

Palawan or Blue-headed Racket-tail (Prioniturus platenae), family Psittaculidae, Palawan, Philippines

photograph by Henrick Tan

[best-bird-tournament]

Racket-tail (Prioniturus)

[wellthebardsdead]

*Falûne’s life before his Adventure, worship of tongues*

———

Falûne: *finished milking the cow, quietly pouring it into a canister by the main hall* mean old heifer *rubs the ache in his leg from where she’d kicked him, seemingly the only animal in his care that just hated him and everyone* done, now t- *shuts up hearing Keldrans voice, leading a sermon* huh?… *presses his ear to the wall but realises the sounds louder by the window rafters* … *looks at the crates by the milk canisters and feels himself battling internally. Knowing he’s forbidden from sitting for sermons with the acolytes, but wanting so badly to be like them and devote himself further to Selûne* …oh dear I’m going to be in so much trouble… *whimpers as he climbs onto the crates only to find himself too short* I- rats- *sighs and looks down, seeing his boots* … *pulls them off and looks at his overgrown hooves, how unnaturally they sit as he stands on his ankles after mimicking walking on feet with them* … *grimaces and stifles back a whimper as he stretches each one and forces himself to stand, balancing, on his hooves* o-ow ow— owie- *hisses and bites his forked tongue before suddenly feeling all his pains vanish as he realises he can see through the glass and hear clearly, his ears eagerly locking onto Keldrans voice as he speaks on scriptures he’s never been granted the opportunity to read*

Keldran: *reading aloud to his students, glancing up briefly to see if they’re still paying attention, only to spot the horns and eyes of a familiar blue devil snooping* what in the-

Falûne: *trying to listen closer not hearing what keldran said, only for both of his ankles to practically scream in pain from being stretched* Ngh- o-Oh GODS NO- *stumbles back off of the crates, clawing at them to try and save himself from the fall only to bring them down on himself and the milk canisters, pinning his tail and causing an ungodly loud racket* n-no no- *scrambles to try and free his tail, crying and quickly cowering, shielding his head with his arms as he hears the door to the hall open and close, but only one set of footsteps approaching* l-lady Selûne f-forgive me, please forgive me-

Keldran: *walks out fully prepared to berate and punish him only to see the state his antics had landed him in, his tail definitely broken beneath the crate and Lûne already cowering* Lady of Silver grant me patience. Why. Lû. Why?

Falûne: I-I’m s-sorry I’m sorry! *sobs and chokes on his own tears* I-i only wanted to learn! I swear it! I only wanted to learn more of our lady!

Keldran: *sighs, deciding he’s been punished enough already and needing to return to his lesson. Simply lifts the crate and heals his tail* just go wash up and get back to your duties. *walks off*

*that afternoon*

Falûne: *got called to Keldrans office for an early tea service, the events of the day still fresh in his mind* f-father superior? *sheepishly knocks*

Keldran: enter, lû.

Falûne: *enters and feels his blood turn to ice seeing him standing, waiting* … *pushes the tea in and sets it on the desk before standing before him, right hand over left as always as he waits for command* …

Keldran: Sit down and read the sermon I’ve open on my desk. Every afternoon you’ll read while I have my tea and organise my paperwork.

Falûne: *blinks and looks up at him surprised* r-really?

Keldran: sit. *walks to his desk and sits down himself*

Falûne: *sits on the little stool he’d set out for him and excitedly starts reading quietly*

Keldran: out loud.

Falûne: *stomach turning, barely literate enough as is. Able to understand the words and their meanings but useless in attempting to pronounce them* I-i- okay- I’ll try… *starts reading aloud, barely making it a sentence in before hissing in pain as his tongue is caught by a clothes peg* Aghh-?!!?! *looks at Keldran with hurt and betrayal in his eyes*

Keldran: Start again. Youll get another for every mistake. By the time we’re done with this book you should remember your lessons well.

Falûne: *hands trembling as he takes hold of the book again, trying not to drool from the peg holding a point of his tongue* y-yeth, father-

*present day*

Falûne: and that’s how I learned to read without error!

Gale: ARE YOU SURE- *inhales* YOU WERENT ABUSED?!?!

[proton-wobbler]

Great Backyard Bird Off - the Americas (poll 7)

Bird Support

Austral Thrush (Turdus falcklandii)

Common and familiar bird of southern South America, found in town parks, gardens, woodlands, forests, matorral, and other semiopen habitats, usually in areas with taller trees nearby. Feeds mainly on the ground, often on lawns, and also in fruiting bushes and trees. Fall and winter flocks can number the hundreds. Plumage is not very colorful, but bright yellow bill is often striking. Male has a blacker head and darker upperparts than the female. Juvenile has a duller bill with dark spotting on underparts. (eBird)

Lesson's motmot (Momotus lessonii)

Large motmot of tropical lowland forest and edge, mainly in humid areas. Perches low to high, usually in shady areas. Blue crown with a big black central patch, unlike solid blue of Blue-capped Motmot, which occurs to the north. Plumage overall less contrasting in pattern than Turquoise-browed Motmot, with much smaller tail rackets. The name ‘motmot’ comes from double-hooting call of this species, which can sound like an owl, and is mainly uttered around dawn. (eBird)

"For being such a showy and colorful bird, it sure is hard to spot. But they are cool and they swing that thang around"

image sources: motmot (Amy Brewer), thrush (Sebastian Saiter Villagran)

[sprinklecipher]

Ranking Every Hummingbird Species Name Based on How Much It Sounds like a Fairy

One thing I love about hummingbirds is that they have absolutely adorable species names, so I thought it would be fun to rate how well each of those cute names would suit a fairy (either like an individual fairy character or a race of fairy beings)

Basically, I went through all 366 hummingbird species listed on Wikipedia and sorted them into tiers based on how fairy-ish the vibes were for each species name

When making my judgments I omitted the word “hummingbird” from any species that included it (surprisingly few, tbh), and changed possessive nouns to their non-possessive form

tier list (and cute hummingbird photos!) below the cut

Tier 5. Not fairy names at all

These names don’t work as fairy names at all, often because if you take out the word “hummingbird” they are just a non-fairylike adjective or random noun. A lot of them clearly evoke a specific, non-fairy thing

Sample names:

Oaxaca hummingbird <- that’s just a place

Bee hummingbird <- just bug

Green mango <- literally a fruit

Tier 5 list: Red-billed emerald; Grey-bellied comet; Veraguan mango; Hispaniolan mango; Purple-throated carib; Peruvian racket-tail; Fiery-throated hummingbird; Antillean crested hummingbird; Green-throated carib; Black-tailed trainbearer; Green-tailed trainbearer; Red-billed streamertail; Black-billed streamertail; Amazilia hummingbird; White-throated daggerbill; Geoffroy's daggerbill; Ruby-throated hummingbird; Volcano hummingbird; Glow-throated hummingbird; Turquoise-crowned hummingbird; Violet-crowned hummingbird; Cinnamon-sided hummingbird; Azure-crowned hummingbird; Copper-tailed hummingbird; Saw-billed hermit; Hook-billed hermit; Needle-billed hermit; Straight-billed hermit; Long-billed hermit; Great-billed hermit; Jamaican mango; Puerto Rican mango; Ecuadorian piedtail; Peruvian piedtail; Mountain avocetbill; Black-backed  thornbill; Purple-backed thornbill; Bronze-tailed thornbill; Long-billed starthroat; Garnet-throated hummingbird; Oasis hummingbird; Wine-throated hummingbird; Violet-capped hummingbird; Pirre hummingbird; Snowy-bellied hummingbird; Copper-rumped hummingbird; Cinnamon hummingbird; Buff-tailed sicklebill; Bumblebee hummingbird; Many-spotted hummingbird; White-tipped sicklebill; Mexican hermit; Green-fronted  lancebill; Blue-fronted lancebill; Tooth-billed hummingbird; Green mango; Rufous-capped thornbill; Olivaceous thornbill; Blue-mantled thornbill; Sword-billed hummingbird; Talamanca hummingbird; Black-chinned hummingbird; Blue-headed hummingbird; Xantus's hummingbird; Emerald-chinned hummingbird; Violet-headed hummingbird; Spot-throated hummingbird; Olive-spotted hummingbird; Green-fronted hummingbird; Blue-vented hummingbird; Steely-vented hummingbird; Indigo-capped hummingbird; Chestnut-bellied hummingbird; Green-bellied hummingbird; Buff-bellied hummingbird; Rufous-tailed hummingbird; Mangrove hummingbird; Sapphire-throated hummingbird; Purple-chested hummingbird; Scissor-tailed hummingbird; Sapphire-bellied hummingbird; Costa's hummingbird; Rufous hummingbird; Broad-tailed hummingbird; Tres Marias hummingbird; White-eared hummingbird; Black-bellied hummingbird; Scaly-breasted hummingbird; Blue-chested hummingbird; Violet-chested hummingbird; Rivoli's hummingbird; Bee hummingbird; Anna's hummingbird; Allen's hummingbird; Broad-billed hummingbird; White-tailed hummingbird; Oaxaca hummingbird; Stripe-tailed hummingbird; Swallow-tailed hummingbird; Blue-tailed hummingbird; White-throated hummingbird; White-bellied hummingbird; Green-and-white hummingbird; Violet-bellied hummingbird; Giant hummingbird

Tier 4. A smidge fairy-ish

These are names that have some aspect that reads vaguely fairy-ish to me (whimsical, magical, etc.) but the name as a whole doesn't scream "fairy" to me for one reason or another

Sample names:

Sombre hummingbird <- honestly, I could see “Sombre” being used as a name for a race of particularly gloomy spirits

Rainbow-bearded thornbill <- loses points for the “bill” part since fairies generally don’t have beaks but the rainbow beard part is whimsical enough to save it from the bottom tier

Gilded sapphire <- I keep going back and forth about the gemstone-related names like this. They feel somewhat fairyish to me but they generally could also describe literal gemstones pretty well, which is probably what I'd think of first if I heard them out of context

Tier 4 list: Brazilian ruby; Gilded sapphire; Short-tailed woodstar; Tapajos hermit; Santa Marta woodstar; Golden-tailed sapphire; Chilean woodstar; Planalto hermit; Golden-bellied starfrontlet; Slender-tailed woodstar; Bahama woodstar; Inagua woodstar; Cozumel emerald; Canivet's emerald; Western emerald; Rufous-throated sapphire; Short-tailed emerald; Band-tailed barbthroat; Pale-tailed barbthroat; White-tailed goldenthroat; Green-tailed goldenthroat; Violet-throated starfrontlet; Buff-winged starfrontlet; Perija starfrontlet; Blue-throated starfrontlet; Rufous-shafted woodstar; Cuban emerald; Hispaniolan emerald; Puerto Rican emerald; Narrow-tailed emerald; Green-tailed emerald; Green-crowned plovercrest; Purple-crowned plovercrest; Blue-headed sapphire; Blue-throated sapphire; White-chinned sapphire; Mexican violetear; Bronze-tailed comet; White-sided hillstar; Blue-throated hillstar; Green-headed hillstar; Buff-thighed puffleg; Black-breasted puffleg; Golden-tailed starfrontlet; Green-backed hillstar; White-bellied mountaingem; Blue-throated mountaingem; Green-throated mountaingem; Peruvian sheartail; Brace's emerald; Bronze-tailed plumeleteer; White-vented plumeleteer; Humboldt's sapphire; White-chested emerald; Plain-bellied emerald; Blue-chinned sapphire; White-vented violetear; Stripe-throated hermit; Black-throated hermit; Grey-chinned hermit; Buff-bellied hermit; Tawny-bellied hermit; Red-tailed comet; Black-breasted hillstar; Hoary puffleg; White-tailed starfrontlet; Purple-bibbed whitetip; Rufous-vented whitetip; Plain-capped starthroat; Blue-tufted starthroat; Green-breasted mountaingem; Purple-throated  mountaingem; Slender sheartail; Wedge-tailed sabrewing; Sombre hummingbird; Glittering-throated emerald; Wire-crested thorntail; Wedge-tailed hillstar; Rufous-booted racket-tail; Stripe-breasted starthroat; White-throated mountaingem; Bearded mountaineer; Rufous-breasted hermit; Koepcke's hermit; Green thorntail; Black-bellied thorntail; Letitia's thorntail; Racket-tipped thorntail; Marvelous spatuletail; White-booted racket-tail; Grey-tailed mountaingem; Mexican sheartail; Beautiful sheartail; Charming hummingbird; Fiery-tailed awlbill; Black  jacobin; Broad-tipped hermit; Dusky-throated hermit; Green-breasted mango; Black-throated mango; Scaled metaltail; Streak-throated hermit; Pale-bellied hermit; Green-throated mango; Speckled hummingbird; Vervain hummingbird; White-necked jacobin; Scale-throated hermit; Long-tailed hermit; Rainbow-bearded thornbill; Dusky hummingbird; Calliope hummingbird; Buffy hummingbird; Tumbes hummingbird; White-bellied emerald

Tier 3. A little more fairy-ish

Like Tier 4, but more. Also, a lot of these names would work better for a different kind of magical critter

Sample names:

Velvet-browed brilliant <- the noun part of the species name is so important, and my brain can't fully decide what I expect a "brilliant" to be. A fairy would make sense, though

White-whiskered hermit <- this is a dwarf

Viridian metaltail <- cool name for a dragon

Tier 3 list: Snowcap; Violet-fronted brilliant; Viridian metaltail; Tyrian metaltail; Perija metaltail; Neblina metaltail; Green-crowned brilliant; Honduran emerald; Andean emerald; Versicolored emerald; Fiery-throated metaltail; Coppery metaltail; Tepui goldenthroat; Violet-throated metaltail; Violet-capped woodnymph; Rufous-webbed brilliant; Bronzy inca; Great sapphirewing; White-bearded hermit; White-whiskered hermit; Hooded visorbearer; Horned sungem; Frilled coquette; Buffy helmetcrest; Blue-bearded helmetcrest; Green-bearded helmetcrest; Turquoise-throated puffleg; Golden-breasted puffleg; Colorful puffleg; Brown inca; Black inca; Green inca; Velvet-browed brilliant; Black-throated brilliant; Magenta-throated woodstar; Purple-throated woodstar; Fork-tailed woodnymph; Long-tailed woodnymph; Coppery-headed emerald; Shining-green hummingbird; Sapphire-spangled emerald; Gould's jewelfront; Mountain velvetbreast; Sooty-capped hermit; Green hermit; Little hermit; Short-crested coquette; Rufous-crested coquette; Black-crested coquette; White-crested coquette; White-bearded helmetcrest; Black-thighed puffleg; Coppery-bellied puffleg; Sapphire-vented puffleg; Emerald-bellied puffleg; Collared inca; Gould's inca; Rainbow starfrontlet; Dusky starfrontlet; Pink-throated brilliant; Fawn-breasted brilliant; White-bellied woodstar; Sparkling-tailed woodstar; Scintillant hummingbird; Coppery emerald; Rufous sabrewing; Outcrop sabrewing; White-tailed emerald; Mexican woodnymph; Blue-capped puffleg; Velvet-purple coronet; Blue-tailed emerald; Chiribiquete emerald; Glittering-bellied emerald; Curve-winged sabrewing; Grey-breasted sabrewing; Rufous-breasted sabrewing; Santa Marta sabrewing; Buff-breasted sabrewing; Napo sabrewing; White-browed hermit; Lesser violetear; Greenish puffleg; Buff-tailed coronet; Chestnut-breasted coronet; Amethyst-throated mountaingem; White-tailed sabrewing; Berylline hummingbird; Cinnamon-throated hermit; Andean hillstar; Rufous-gaped hillstar; Reddish hermit; Bronzy hermit; Ecuadorian hillstar; Juan Fernandez firecrown; Long-tailed sylph; Violet-tailed sylph; Venezuelan sylph; Lucifer sheartail; Brown violetear; Black metaltail; Golden-crowned emerald

Tier 2. Fairy names with caveats

These are names that I think could work well for fairies but that have some aspect about them that makes them not 100% obviously fairylike to me

Sample names:

Sparkling violetear <- for some reason, I initially parsed that second word as ''violet-eer" (like, ''one who violets''?) but apparently it's an unhyphenated form of "violet-ear". A bit less whimsical (if inexplicable) that way, but still charming

Gorgeted woodstar <- I didn't know this before making this list, but a “gorget” is a decorative collar or piece of armor that covers the throat, so the term "gorgeted" refers to a crescent-shaped patch of coloring along the throat

Glowing puffleg <- this isn't about the name, but look at the fellow in the pic--he's got fuzzy little pants! delightful

Tier 2 list: Crimson topaz; Fiery topaz; Empress brilliant; Ruby-topaz hummingbird; Flame-throated sunangel; Amethyst woodstar; Sparkling violetear; Peacock coquette; Spangled coquette; Orange-throated sunangel; Purple-throated sunangel; Amethyst-throated sunangel; Longuemare's sunangel; Green-backed firecrown; Purple-backed sunbeam; Black-hooded sunbeam; Little woodstar;  Minute hermit; Sooty barbthroat; Hyacinth visorbearer; White-tufted sunbeam; Purple-collared woodstar; Gorgeted woodstar; Esmeraldas woodstar; Garden emerald; Glowing puffleg; Diamantina sabrewing; Dot-eared coquette; Tufted coquette; Gorgeted puffleg; Lazuline sabrewing; Violet sabrewing

Tier 1. Straight-up fairy names

These are already intended for fairies, and you can’t convince me otherwise

Sample names:

Butterfly coquette <- aka the pokemon Ribombee

Shining sunbeam <- this is the most whimsical name I have ever heard. How is this a real animal

Tolima blossomcrown <- can’t get much more “fairy” than flower crowns

Purple-crowned fairy <- oh, come on

Tier 1 list: Crowned woodnymph; Tolima blossomcrown; Santa Marta blossomcrown; Shining sunbeam; Butterfly coquette; Festive coquette; Royal sunangel; Tourmaline sunangel; Gorgeted sunangel; Merida sunangel; Black-eared fairy; Purple-crowned fairy

[dromeoraptor]

Birds-of-Paradise feel like some speculative evolution project. Once upon a time, a bird found itself on an isolated island continent (most of them live in New Guinea, but some live on Australia, and New Guinea was connected to Australia during glacial periods), and it evolved into a whole family of birds with crazy sexual displays. But not just crazy, but with multiple genera all crazy in different ways. It really does feel like someone wanted to make a spec evo project showing off how sexual selection and display structures can be, but it's real!

This is far from a comprehensive list, but we have:

The one with a trombone windpipe: Curl-Crested Manucode

This is a bird that looks pretty normal, it's from the first branch to split off from the others so it's still monogamous unlike the more extravagant ones. It has a cool sound, but not something you'd expect to need crazy internal workings.

But it does have crazy internal workings, with this super long trachea (windpipe) that bends 4 times before finally getting to the mouth. I'm honestly not sure why it has this windpipe, it's not particularly loud or anything as far as I know.

The "King of the Dance": Western Parotia

Parotias already have complex dances for birds-of-paradise, but the Western Parotia is the one with the most complex of them all. Each Parotia's dance has multiple steps, in a specific order. This one has 6 steps.

Perch Pivot- the male pivots back and forth on a horizontal branch above the display court, a little patch of forest floor that he's cleared out

Head Tilt- the male goes up to a female on the branch and flops his head from side to side.

Court Hop- The male hops across the court, (not one big hop, multiple smaller ones like a sparrow or kangaroo), pauses, and then hops the other way.

Swaying Bounce- The male bounces up and down and side to side as he flutters his wings, moving his head in an infinity sign. He also has a variation on this where it closes its wings and bounces more vigorously

Ballerina Dance- has four parts to it. He does a bow, he walks a bit, he pauses, and then he moves flares those shiny neck feathers while hopping side to side.

The one with wires coming out of its head: the King-of-Saxony

This one has two really weird feathers called "head wires". Twice as long as the bird's body, and he can point them backwards, to the side, or even forwards! They're not just long too, their structure's all weird with the barbs fused into these plasticy tabs.

The one that likes it rough: the Greater Bird-of-Paradise

While showy for a bird, they're nothing too special for a bird of paradise. The main special thing is their big plume of feathers on their back, and their display is basically just running along the branches showing off their plumes and making a racket.

But once he's got the female's attention, he shows the underside of that plume on his back, and then he starts flapping his wings and basically hopping backwards and touching her with his rear end.

Then he starts clapping her with his wings, and kinda pecking at her head. I don't think he open his mouth but he's not exactly being gentle with that beak. And then comes the sex, both seconds of it. Well 2.5 seconds is what I counted in the video, but yeah. Bird sex in general is really short with few exceptions.

The bald one with a Yoshi saddle: Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise

For these birds, the height of male sexiness is a bald head, it seems.

Wrinkly, pale blue bald skin on the head.

Even the females get in on the bald action, it seems.

There's also this thing on his back that he can open and close, this time made of feathers and not bald skin, that I think looks like a Yoshi saddle thing. Also that bib thingy is green, but only at a certain angle.

The one that sings like a cricket: The Black Sicklebill

Crickets sing with their wings, and so does this bird. One of the things he does is rub his wings either against each other or the base of the tail (we're not sure), and it makes this knocking or "distant machine-gun" sound.

The one that sounds like a Machine Gun: The Brown Sickebill

His display is impressive, I showed off his relative's display in the images of the previous part. But the more interesting thing to me is that he sounds like he's imitating some sorta rapid-fire ray gun. I don't know how true this is, but supposedly, during WW2, Japanese soldiers mistook their songs for gunfire.

Credit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's YouTube channel being my main source for this post!

[plungermusic]

The Girl With The Golden Larynx… and why not?

“Welcome to Film74 with me, Barry Norman. Tonight’s show focuses exclusively on To Shoot Another Day, the latest major emotion feature from Essex auteur (or should that be ‘auteuse’?) Rosalie Cunningham.

Cunningham demonstrates an unquestionable dramatic flair for the cinematic, right from the opening moments with the boldly Bond-evoking (both the Monty Norman/John Barry original and Wings’ West Coastiana remake) To Shoot Another Day, and there’s another nod to the great one too in the John-Barry-meets-Roy-Budd-in-a-Soho-porno-theatre Heavy Pencil which mashes up Carmen Miranda-style latin rhythms and vibes with VDGG/Focus flute-and-organ… and, somehow, pulls it off with aplomb.

More celluloid slinkiness colours In The Shade Of The Shadows, a walk-these-mean-streets-alone torch song with a gothic chorus-line erm, chorus, and a surprise detour to a New Orleans dive-cum-Tattooine cantina (which is clever, as that doesn’t happen for three years yet) for a bit of furry, extemporising saxophone; and the instrumental Smut Peddler - a moody, suspense-filled ‘George Carter tailing a suspect on a crowded street’ acoustic-led cue that explodes into a meaty electric version of same (at the point of discovery and subsequent headlong chase, one presumes) culminating in a nicely ‘blow to the head and loss of consciousness’ chaotic breakdown close.

Tinsel Town trimmings come late in Stepped Out Of Time: an anaesthesia-induced hazy out-of-body waltzing weepie that meanders from minor to major and back again (a regular feature throughout, in fact) that tugs at the heartstrings with Cunningham's silky childlike voice building to passionate Piaf-y vibrato, but all the time maintaining a cut-glass diction Celia Johnson would be proud of. A rather trippy rising maelstrom culminates in some highly Spaghetti Western mariachi brass in the dramatic finale.

So far, so Hollywood… but like Gaumont, the Archers or Messrs Waters & Gilmour, Cunningham’s essential Englishness shows through, particularly in the flashes of Edwardian musical hall psychedelia: the barrelling rocker Timothy Martin’s Conditioning School is a prime example, as are Denim Eyes (a 'Wish You Were Here in Strawberry Fields' reverie complete with vintage mellotron), Good To Be Damned which, although rather worryingly ‘blues’ is filtered through a Spectoresque wall of reverb and is ornamented with impassioned vocal acrobatics scaling ecstatic peaks and plumbing soul searing lows, with touches of whimsical Arnold Laynery, McCartneyisms (and, my producer wanted me to say, a hint of Roobarb & Custard), and the “One of these days I’m going to cut you into Jimmy Page’ portentous-riffer Spook Racket, which exudes an air of Glam menace tailor-made for a 70s football hooliganism-based Play For Today.

Appropriately (or is that ironically) enough, To Shoot Another Day closes with The Premiere, another dramatic, cinematic Bond-flavoured epic shot through with snare-rolls and operatic tutti ‘stabs’ to accompany the rolling credits.

Or not, if you have the ‘directors cut’ CD rather than the download or vinyl: in which case you can stay in your seats to polish off the last of your Payne's Poppets and enjoy the bonus features of Return Of The Ellington, an urgent 6/8 evocation of the early, funnier work of the continental colossi van Leer and Akkerman and includes some very Jobson-like electric violin, and the playfully Lovin’ Spoonful-opening quirky Home, full of more of that particularly English fairground / vaudeville / music hall Edwardian whimsy..

Cunningham is ably backed by a cast of supporting artists (more of which later) and her co-producer, co-director, and co-wriiter on four of the ten (or five of the twelve, if you’d rather) tracks here, Rosco Wilson: who, beyond his normal Technicolor guitar skills, also shows his drumming chops on several tracks - a Renaissance man, no less. That being said, To Shoot Another Day appears to be very much one woman’s vision - as you’d expect from an auteuse - and her strikingly lithe, thrilling and vivacious vocal is the golden thread that binds it all together.

Rather impressively, the creation of To Shoot Another Day was entirely a two-hander production of independent British outfit, Mushy Room Studio, which, truth be told, is the duo’s home in Southend, Essex. So, it’s all credit to them that they have combined all the gloss and glamour of the Hollywood ‘big players’ with the intrigue and depth of Art House output, spiced with bags of English eccentricity for that unmistakeable stamp of authenticity.

To sum up then, To Shoot Another Day is the perfect entertainment for any discerning cineaste, and you can’t say fairer than that..”

To Shoot Another Day is released on Friday, November 1st 2024 and is available for download from Rosalie Cunningham’s Bandcamp site, here: https://rosaliecunningham.bandcamp.com/album/to-shoot-another-day

Also on the Bandcamp site are links to pre-order the CD and Vinyl versions of the album.

CREDITS: Rosalie Cunningham 

Songwriter, producer  / Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards & percussion 

Rosco Wilson 

Co-producer / Co-writer of tracks 4, 5, 8 &10 / Guitar, drums on 6, additional drums on 7 

SUPPORTING CAST 

Raphael Mura: drums 

David Woodcock: piano on 1, 4, 5, 7 & 9; Hammond on 4 

Ian East: flute, clarinet and sax on 3; sax on 5 

Itamar Rubinger: drums on 1 

Barkley Woodcock: bark on 7 

Recorded & mixed at Mushy Room Studio by Rosalie & Rosco 

Drums and piano on track 1 recorded at SS2 Studios & engineered by Rees Broomfield 

Mastered by Jon Astley

Photography: Rob Blackham

* We know ‘girl’ might be considered dismissive when Rosalie is a fully-grown, independent, modern woman, but it scans better, and what’s more keeps the headline shorter, OK? Apologies if you’ve been offended, but it is 1974 after all…

[bluejadedragon]

More Sneak Peaks to WIPS (because I haven't finished any and I really need to)

1. Mermay? Sharpagne? More likely than you'd think.

His eyes snapped up, his first thought being another employee had found him and was going to start harassing him. Nobody was running up the beach though, instead a frothing disturbance a few hundred metres away drew his gaze. With a furrowed brow, he fixed his bookmark before leaving his book on the rock, standing to approach the racket. 

An angry snarl threatened to escape as his closer inspection revealed something trapped in a discarded fishing net. It was large, and shimmering bluish scales shone as a thick tail smacked against the bank, distressed trills filling the air above the splashing. Champagne sighed quietly, approaching slowly as he called out.

“Easy there, buddy, you’re gonna get hurt if you keep thrashing like that.”

To his disappointment, that only seemed to make the creature more distressed, the trills cutting off as the tail slammed painfully against the sand and rope. Champagne winced as he noted a small trickle of red spilling between iridescent scales. If they kept this up, they could get seriously hurt- a severed fin or worse.

“Easy there, easy, let’s get that off you, ey?”

He reached forward, grabbing the net and pulling slightly to get the creature fully onto the wet sand dividing the beach and ocean. He tugged a tattered cover off the old net with a wrinkled nose, turning back to continue freeing the creature before freezing. 

Blue-green eyes that matched the shimmering tail stared back at him.

Champagne swallowed thickly. A mer. He was freeing a- a mer. Okay. Wow.

“Hi there.” He said softly, reaching to slowly start untangling the rope from around the large blue-green tail. The mer didn’t respond, watching him intently with wide, wide eyes, hands curling into sand, body tense.

2. Losing Ourselves on the Interstate

The kid fell asleep sometime before the border cross into Pennsylvania. Benny didn’t mind, happy to let the kid rest as long as they needed. The dark bags under their eyes certainly suggested they needed it. They blinked awake as Benny turned off to a pit stop. He didn’t plan to stay long, a few hours of sleep maybe, but the look in the kid’s eyes as they stopped at a slightly shabby carpark made him hesitate.

“Hey, Astra? Do you want to keep moving? We don’t have to stay.” Look, don’t judge, he tries, okay? He never claimed to be the best when it came to people, but even he could tell something was off with the kid.

“No.” They breathed. Their eyes were fixed on the wildflowers growing by the toilet block.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” The bite is back, but it has no real heat to it. “Bathroom.”

And then they’re gone, disappeared into the dark. Benny let out a soft sigh, then grabbed his favoured green blanket, climbed into the back and curled up to catch a few hours of shut eye. With the van off, the sounds of wildlife drifted through the metal plating to reach his ears. Tiredly, he rolled over, pillowed his head on his arm, and sunk into the depth of sleep.

A door opening caused him to stir in his sleep, but a quiet, “you can keep sleeping” stopped him from waking completely. 

It was only when the sun began to rise nearly six hours after he initially fell asleep that Benny properly woke. With a grunt, he pushed himself up and into the front seat. He kicked the door open, stepped out and stretched, watching the sky transform as he leaned against the van’s front. He glanced over as Astra rounded the bonnet to sit above the number plate. In their hand was a thermos that they offered Benny.

“Coffee.” They said by way of explanation at Benny’s odd look. It was decent coffee. Once he was feeling more awake, Benny hopped back into his seat and warmed up the engine.

“Come on kid. Let's go get some real breakfast.”

Astra nodded.

“Can we pick up some crickets from a pet store too?”

Benny frowned and turned to ask before pausing. His gaze flicked from the creature on his dash to the kid next to him.

“Where did you get that.” He asked flatly. Astra scooped the critter up and placed it in a small container.

“Behind the toilets. I don’t know how long they were there for. I don’t know if they’ll live, but they were an abandoned pet. Have to be. Leachie’s aren’t native here. And this one’s just a baby.”

Benny elected not to question the seemingly random reptile trivia, instead sighing and not trying too hard to hide his smirk. “Alright kid. Let’s get all three of us fed up, ‘ey?” Astra looked up at him with something like hope in their eyes, before looking down at the critter -leachie- with a small smile.

“Yeah.”

3. Sneak Peak to Chapter 11 of LttS

Jake muttered his goodbyes, mind a mess he was trying to clean as he kicked off the side of the building. The other’s had gotten used to his odd form of travel, only offering calls to be careful now instead of the shocked gasps he’d heard the first time they’d seen him fly. The wind whipped his hair about his face and he closed his eyes, imagining his worries being blown off his back. Unfortunately, it was this relaxation that allowed him to pick up on the sounds of yelping.

His eyes snapped open and he was diving before he could think, goop covering his eyes to protect against the wind. He barely had time to process where he was going before he found his target. 

He felt his blood boil.

“HEY!” He yelled, dust flicking around him and condensing in his goo as he landed, skin pricking with anger. The group jumped before turning on him.The ringmaster glared at him, but Jake wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was staring daggers into the teen a few steps behind the leader. A very familiar teen who he’d seen only a few weeks ago in a dark alley. 

“What do you think you’re-” “Two options.” Jake cut off, voice pitched low and dangerous. “Either you can step away from that fine woman there, or I can make you.”

He grinned at that, all teeth and no spark, before flicking a small orb to land straight between the leader’s eyes. “So, what’ll it be?” 

The group charged.

- - - - - - -

Annie was beginning to wonder if her new friend was the cause of her series of unfortunate events.

[toothbrushcentipede]

In The Shape Of An Animal

✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣

Word Count: 1379

✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺✣⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆⚰︎⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺

You scurry farther into the darkness of the unlit house, finding the fallen roof you had seen from the outside by light alone in the hall. The ashes from the once burning wood gracefully float through the air in the sun coming from the opening. Your hand clenches around the object it’s holding. The metal feels uncomfortably heavy, the handle not meant for your hands. The grip had been worn down into smooth bumps that didn’t fit the divots of your palm and fingers.

There’s a creaking and clicking from the wooden floorboards of the house and heavy, clawed footsteps hurriedly tapping. It doesn’t sound like a fox, which you’d rather be facing off against than whatever this thing was. The increasing rushing sound of footsteps rattles you into throwing open a window, unintentionally making a clear racket for whatever it is to catch with its ears. You are quick to slip your body through it, regardless of hurting yourself or not, rushing to get out before it does. Your hip bangs against the window frame, creating a wide slowly blooming bruise. It’s in the doorway, whatever it is, you slam the window shut and can’t see through the dirt and grim on the pane. You almost cut your own finger off in a hurry to put a separation between it and you.

Your breaths are rapid and not deep enough to grant you proper oxygen supply. You don’t bother waiting for the thing to confront you in the house's courtyard. You turn tail and start running back through the village, you can hear the crashing of the front door breaking down behind you. The old wood splits like dry straw from the force of the aggressor. You only turn to look back when you are almost out of the field plot. You really shouldn’t have. This wasn’t a normal coyote or wolf. Something close to a man was lunging after you, ripped clothes hanging unbothered from its body. Black-blue veins trailing most of its form. Frighteningly bright and intelligent eyes staring you down with teeth like those of a canine. There were more eyes in the brush, lashing out as you grit your teeth and sprint past them. One clawed hand slashes you just below your ass, digging into the meat of your thigh and scraping the flesh off the back of your knee. A short garbled scream leaves you as you still try to take in the air you needed to run. You need somewhere safe from this current brandishing you with terrifying encounters. You don’t want to die. You hastily bring the cleaver down on the carpal bones of the half creatures. It tears away with a yowl back into the golden hues of the wheat wall. The one from the house is still shooting through the growth towards you, many others chasing after you by proxy. They seemed elated at the prospect of you running from them. Like they knew they would do you in anyway. You are terrified, biting the inside of your cheek to keep yourself in charge of your own head.

You manage to keep your grip on your only defense as you tumble yourself over a fence post. They let you right yourself. Bits fly off into the wheat but you don’t stop to check for splinters. In this instance you are smart enough not to. The fluids from those things is rolling down your arm just like your blood is pooling down your leg. The pain was unbearable, you needed leather between your teeth or you’d crack them. You run through some village houses but they won’t hold the creatures far from you. You knew too well from testing the doors yourself on your search. Several just came crashing through the windows after you had blocked the door with bookshelves.

They don’t even stop to pick at the corpses littering the ground when you loop them around it. Not one twitches at the chance for food without the work. These are pack animals, who hunt and kill for glory and competition between themselves. You were a status gain. Their jerked movements are always a little too slow to catch you but clearly just a play. One has you cornered and it rips its teeth through a chunk of your forearm like it's nothing. When you struggle it growls like it was a play bite. You slam your body into it, casting it aside as you run again. Anything to be farther away. You shouldn’t have wished for home again. Not like this.

Why not the giant castle? That’s what you think as you almost pass it to loop around the town again. But you know they’re easily getting fed up and just want their teeth torn through your jugular. With sprawling stone walls and intimidating architecture, surely you’d be protected? One of the many places you had been dreading during your whole time here. You had a bad feeling about it, not unlike when you first came to the village, or saw that woman for the first time.

Your body is starting to weaken with blood loss but adrenaline finally pushes you through the gates towards the sprawling building. One has the gall to tackle you into the mud and stone, smashing your head into the insides of a rotting crow. The muffled squishing sound as its guts give way to the back of your head makes you sick. The new liquids seeping onto you from its insides. The thing pushes down on you, trying to rip its teeth through the flesh of your face and neck. The rest watch from the gates, letting the one on you take the kill, respect. But you won’t let it kill you, no matter how frightened and in severe pain you were.

You bring the already bloodied cleaver up to its neck between you and push with one hand onto the blade and one on the handle. The creature doesn’t bother backing away, too lost in thought of the kill it will take, maybe the glory you think. It seems prideful. It brings itself down on the sharp edge of the metal, not minding the cutting of its own throat in favor of getting to yours. Its clawed hands start ripping your head and hair towards its own mouth but you thrust the blade farther into its windpipe. Its hands slap maggots from the bird in your hair, knotting them in with an unseen talent. Blood falls like a waterfall from it, you watch as it chokes and finally hear the growls and encouragement from its brethren, encouraging the death of you. A spray like a can of paint was dropped on your head soaks your face in a blackish colour. You separate its head from its body, ripping the tendons and muscle across the blade with a sickening squelch that makes you want to just lay there and cry. You feel tears collecting on your waterline. You want to give up and fall to these creatures. Never before were you so close to the eternal rest you had once wanted more than anything else. But you still have something in you. The weight of the body falls upon you and you toss it aside to sit up. And all you can is look at the crowd of predators waiting for you to step back to the gates. If you didn’t have one's blood all over your face you would’ve considered giving up again, but you know they’re somewhat mortal. The wound is still spurting from its body onto the ground, a pool settling around your battered body.

You gather yourself from the ground hurriedly after a stunned moment of thinking they might continue after you, backing further away towards the castle’s doors but they don’t follow. Howling at you in anger but too afraid to step in. You don’t think it’s from you. It definitely isn't as they still seem intent on slaughtering you. You toss the head at them all, hitting one square in the chest, it snarls. You kick the still twitching body to the border they won’t cross. Limping towards the doors. As you close them you hear the howls from them but don’t bother mourning, not right now.

[ryannbosetti]

Joyas Voladoras

By Brian Doyle | June 12, 2012

*this was sent to me following a transcendental haircut hour with poet Marie Howe who initially read the essay out loud to me while I pushed her curls into a flow, misty eyes for both of us

Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests.

Each one visits a thousand flowers a day. They can dive at sixty miles an hour. They can fly backwards. They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest. But when they rest they come close to death: on frigid nights, or when they are starving, they retreat into torpor, their metabolic rate slowing to a fifteenth of their normal sleep rate, their hearts sludging nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be. Consider for a moment those hummingbirds who did not open their eyes again today, this very day, in the Americas: bearded helmet-crests and booted racket-tails, violet-tailed sylphs and violet-capped woodnymphs, crimson topazes and purple-crowned fairies, red-tailed comets and amethyst woodstars, rainbow-bearded thornbills and glittering-bellied emeralds, velvet-purple coronets and golden-bellied star-frontlets, fiery-tailed awlbills and Andean hillstars, spatuletails and pufflegs, each the most amazing thing you have never seen, each thunderous wild heart the size of an infant’s fingernail, each mad heart silent, a brilliant music stilled.

Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate. Their hearts are built of thinner, leaner fibers than ours. Their arteries are stiffer and more taut. They have more mitochondria in their heart muscles—anything to gulp more oxygen. Their hearts are stripped to the skin for the war against gravity and inertia, the mad search for food, the insane idea of flight. The price of their ambition is a life closer to death; they suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature. It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.

The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. It is a room, with four chambers. A child could walk around it, head high, bending only to step through the valves. The valves are as big as the swinging doors in a saloon. This house of a heart drives a creature a hundred feet long. When this creature is born it is twenty feet long and weighs four tons. It is waaaaay bigger than your car. It drinks a hundred gallons of milk from its mama every day and gains two hundred pounds a day, and when it is seven or eight years old it endures an unimaginable puberty and then it essentially disappears from human ken, for next to nothing is known of the the mating habits, travel patterns, diet, social life, language, social structure, diseases, spirituality, wars, stories, despairs and arts of the blue whale. There are perhaps ten thousand blue whales in the world, living in every ocean on earth, and of the largest animal who ever lived we know nearly nothing. But we know this: the animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles.

Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

———

[thetoaddaddy]

It was hardly more than a few more scratches. Yet whatever Sasori had done this time had left Jiraiya with a raging headache for days. The brat wouldn’t stop jabbering, stabbing, and raking that metal tail across the bars like he was begging for change. It was a racket that began to pound in his head.

Alas he began to feel it. A growing… offness? Something felt weird. Like a sense of the clock was running out. They’re going to kill him soon surely. If Konoha hasn’t figured out he’s MIA yet then they won’t negotiate for his freedom. Sure he’s ensured his survival with a tidbit or two. Nothing substantial enough that would be worth checking out. A possible hidden passage in a forest full of paths that look intentional or not. A false waterfall in a land that had a handful of beautiful rivers and falls. Caves of mysterious origins. Yeah have fun.

He looks up from his blank staring to hopefully resume his mocking of the puppet again alas… his breathing paused for a moment. His cheeks grew warm. It’s the pretty boy again.

Jiraiya sat up slowly as he kept his eyes on the blond… and his bucket. The way the other was clinging to it one would think it owed him money. Jiraiya barely caught a glimpse or two from that pretty blue eye.

“How you feeling? Your puppet friend told me you were sick.” He asks as he looks over the criminal. “You don’t look sick….” Well it should probably just be said. “I don’t care that you gave me a handy. It’s only weird if you make it weird.”

Confusion struck Jiraiya dumb when Deidara retreated. His mouth hung open unsure what to say. He’s used to being equal. He was happy to give back after getting it. It’s only fair. He didn’t want Deidara to suffer from the need.

Jiraiya inhales a long deep sigh before slowly letting it out. Right now he felt a bit of the blues that came after well… cumming. Usually that feeling can be ignored when he’s in the company of someone who needs a reach around.

His hope fluttered for only a moment when the door opened. It’s followed by disappointment seeing the puppet again. He’d rather the pretty one than this hag. One thing he’s learned is Sasori is an immature brat. One that throws tantrums over not getting his way.

His brows raise hearing the comment. He looks down at the floor. It’s clear to those who well… have lived that it’s a bodily fluid. It smells like sex in here. Puppets can’t smell then, huh? It’s obvious with all the senses in tact what happened. But if Sasori was too daft to pick up on the rest of the context clues then Jiraiya wasn’t going to fess up either. He fixes himself before trotting back over to his gross mattress and plunking down on it.

[the-puffinry]

today's sketch is of a Blue-headed racket-tail/kinawihan (prioniturus platenae) parrot, maybe the most beautiful parrot I've ever seen -- their strange tailfeathers and green bellies remind me of luna moths or hummingbirds. They're endemic to the Palawan islands in the Philippines. Neocolor II wax pastels + marker 05/003/2023. :)

Here's a link to their entry on the ebird site.

Unfortunately they are threatened by habitat loss, and there are only an estimated 700-1500 of them left. Oil palm plantations and mining operations are rapidly destroying the forests in which they live.

There is a local organisation working to preserve the birds in this area (link to their general site), but their site looks straight out of 2000 and they haven't exactly made their donation link easy to find-- there really isn't an obvious one. You download a form to sponsor an aspiring warden on their cockatoo-specific site. It's a very oldfashioned kind of site, but they seem to be doing good work? If you click the bolded part of the text I copied on the actual site it downloads the contribution form. "The core project of the Philippine Cockatoo Conservation Programme is a wardens scheme to guard the cockatoos, particularly during the breeding season. Former poachers were recruited as wildlife wardens because of their profound knowledge of the species. They are indigenous people of Palawan: the Pala’wan from the south, the Tagbanua tribes and the Cuyunin from the northern part of the province. In return for their dedication and commitment to the project, KFI implements livelihood activities to augment their income. You too can help our wardens through sending their children to school."