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Vireo Showdown; Bracket 1, Semi-Finals

Fun Fact!

Brown-capped: with a song that sounds incredibly similar to the Warbling Vireo, some people believe these species to be conspecific (the same)

Red-eyed: they never stop singing-- a male can sing up to 20,000 songs per day!

For more information on these birds, check out these Species Features:

Brown-capped Vireo | Red-eyed Vireo

Image Sources: Brown-capped (Manuel Pérez R.); REVI (Rick Bowers)

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wake again after rest

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Swallow, swift, nightjar & house martins 🪶

A drawing commissioned by Gabo Wildlife, an organisation working tirelessly to rescue and rehabilitate migratory birds. Swifts and nightjars especially are some of my favourite birds and it was wonderful to focus on them with this piece

[prints]

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y'all ever reach the end of google

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Here it is! All of the raptors of Virginia (and general Southeastern US) put all together.

Which you can now buy conveniently at my inprnt shop!!

Thats right! after tepid interest in giving me money I've finally bit the bullet and opened a place to buy my birds to put on your wall.

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Song Sparrow

I don’t really like this picture but something about it is speaking to me

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In the delta sun, down in Arkansas It’s the great god bird with its altar call And the sewing machine, the industrial god On the great bayou where they saw it fall

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NIGHTJARS

You heard me.  

Nightjars.

They are the BEST birds.  Don’t come at me with BUT CORVIDS y’all know Corvids aren’t birds, they’re magic.

Anyway.  Nightjars.  Why nightjars, you might ask.  Well let me tell  you why.

I’ve already told you about the Tawny Frogmouth

But there is also the Great Eared Nightjar

Pennant-winged Nightjar

Standard-winged Nightjar. Yes, those are part of its wings. No, I don’t know WTF.

This oddly shaped stump.  haha tricked you!  It’s a Tawny frogmouth and baby.

Lyretail Nightjar.  again, why.  again, no idea.

Australian owlet-nightjar

Swallowtail Nightjar.  Not so fancy?  look again. that mustache.

Not into cute mustaches on birds?

Tell that to this Sickle-winged Nightjar.  

Before it cuts you down with its badass wings.

Hey another stump - wait no it’s a FROGMOUTH

I’m not the first to have come to this conclusion.  

says right there.  BEST BIRD.

Ok whatever Indian Nightjar doesn’t care what you think about it.

If you don’t agree, you can sit over there and be wrong.

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A few practice drawings of my barn swallow character, Rusty. Thanks to ebird for reference pics!

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Just as a note to any aspiring biologists and/or casual biology fans: please do not be intimidated by 'professional' biologists! We are all huge nerds! I've just spent 3 days surrounded by experts in my field, and given half the opportunity they will gladly gush about their research/animals, and answer any and all questions with probably more information than you ever wanted to know. If you ever get a chance, I highly encourage you to attend conferences, seminars, or talks in your area-- your local biologist will love you, and will likely even have opportunities for you to volunteer with them if that's something you're into!

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hello i am here to humbly request the yuri genome so we may behold the yuri creature

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_(genre)

String identified: I went here and hit Ctrl + A

Closest match: Hypercompe scribonia genome assembly, chromosome: 12 Common name: Giant Leopard Moth

(image source)

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Simplified bird #108 - tree swallow

( requested by anon )

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This might be my favorite submission so far

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If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

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Last post reminded me I had an old WIP also based on Coyotes by Modest Mouse I really ought to finish one of these days. If I ever figure out how to render it. (The song is almost 10 years old now hello??)