Another first for the water dish, a house wren!

I've seen them hopping around the garden lately but I've never had one on camera getting a drink and quick dip.

#birds

A red fox sitting on a snow bank, beside a roadside delineator post, looking towards the camera.

Red Fox, Signal Mountain, Grand Teton National Park. January, 2020.

📷 Fujifilm X-T3 + XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR
🎞 400 mm – 1/500″ – f/8 – ISO 6400
🏷️ #RedFoxes #NationalParks #Photography #Wildlife

grid of 9 mitosis images in blue watercolor

Mitosis is beautiful in watercolor 🧪🐡🎨 artologica.etsy.com/listing/4350...

Sunrise under a cloudy sky over a sagebrush landscape. The sun has just crested the mountains on the horizon. It is a brilliant burst of sunrise and the clouds are dark.

At the trailhead, at the right time.

No filter or enhancement - just like me.

A closeup photo of a pale butterfly perched on a light-colored, mottled rock. The butterfly has an aqua-blue eye and wings with a base color of white; the wing veins are outlined in greenish yellow with minute black flecks.

Pontia sp. butterfly, one of the Checkered Whites. They're common, beautiful insects. The subtle greenish yellow on the wings is gorgeous, and I especially love the pale aqua-blue eye. This one let me get fairly close while it sunned itself on a rock. (Montana) 🐙🌿

A bright yellow and black wasp on goldenrod.

Four-banded Stink Bug Wasp continues in our garden on the goldenrod. A solitary species, this is an extreme xanthic (yellow) form, not often seen.

A small bird with soft gray plumage sits perched on a mossy rock. Its head and upperparts are a darker slate-gray, while its throat, chest, and belly are a lighter silvery-gray, giving a fluffy appearance. The bird has a short, thin beak, dark eyes, and delicate black legs and feet gripping the rock, with a blurred brownish background behind it.

I love the little birds that don't get any attention. The Torrent Tyrannulet is a very special little flycatcher that spends its whole life hunting insects on the edges of fast-moving rivers. At first, they look like bits of foam or spray at the edge of the water.

#birds #costarica

I did not know little boy Downey Woodpeckers like to wrestle and play fight in the treetops! Monday was the second day they did this, chasing each other behind the leaves for a long time. 🪶

The New Symbol of the Brazilian Right: the American Flag

The American flag performs the same function in Brazil that the confederate flag serves in America
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/w...

Typical. America’s leader announces everyone in Ireland is dead & I live on my own. I didn’t get to see the rapture! Why am I being cancelled & why are there all these dead birds in my flat? Why is it middle aged White men in Dublin who must suffer most? Seriously what’s with the dead birds?

A young female cardinal is looking around on top of a feeder

Good morning! 🪶

One burrowing owl glaring at the camera while the other two make a hasty exit.

Good morning! 🪶

An endemic yellow-faced bee, a VERY small bee (about 7mm) with silvery wings flared crawling across dark rubble. Her body is sparkling black with a bright red abdomen. There are two large compound eyes and three simple eyes, and knobby antennae

Another hidden treasure from Waikamoi: Hyleaus volitalis, a species of Hawaii-endemic yellow-faced bee. (No yellow face on this one, she's female). These bees usually hold their wings close against the body, glad this one decided to show off her colors... #invertebrates #Hawaii 📷🌿🐙

Israel launches airstrikes against top Hamas members in Qatar for Gaza ceasefire talks Israeli officials say US notified before attack, which Doha calls cowardly and a flagrant violation of international law

Netanyahu is bringing the world to the brink of a much wider conflict with his reckless militarism. The UK government should surely stop all arms sales as did Thatcher in the 80’s after the Lebanon invasion. But I guess this means Starmer growing a spine

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Please read the linked article from Mann and Hotez, it summarises everything that’s going wrong in the public understanding of science, health and the environment.

A reconstructed Roman boot is displayed with its sole facing up, showing multiple square-headed iron nails. Below the boot, three individual ancient nails recovered during the excavations are placed on a blue cloth.

New discovery: During excavations at the #Roman fort in Schramberg-Waldmössingen, a Roman workshop for the production of hobnails for the caligae (boots) of Roman soldiers was discovered.
🏺 #archaeology

www.denkmalpflege-bw.de/publikatione...

Best glory I’ve ever seen from a plane! It’s an optical phenomenon that occurs when light interacts in and around tiny droplets of water in the clouds, in the direction opposite the sun. More complex than a rainbow. Here’s a link to some more info: www.zmescience.com/science/phys... #optics #physics

📍RFK Jr. has crossed the Rubicon. The war on science isn’t looming - it’s here. I had hoped that after the darkest days of the pandemic, we could start rebuilding a stronger science world. I was wrong. So, starting today, I’m back. And I want you to join me.
drericding.substack.com/p/im-back-be...

Pirates attacking shipping routes could never have cut small oceangoing traffic by 80 percent. It took a mad king.

Safe parking lot for unhoused schoolchildren appears to have new lease on life San Diego leaders move forward with a plan to help homeless students and their families with secure overnight parking at a former school in City Heights.

Wild how normalized the words "safe parking lot for unhoused schoolchildren" have become in this country.

🎯

NYT headline: As Congress Lies Town, Trump Walks All Over it. Subhed: He Seizes Power in Spending, Oversight, and National Security, While Republicans Shrug.

Now this is a headline.

Front page lead in NYT.

And very strong, no-BS story by @julianbarnes.bsky.social Barnes and Catie Edmondson.

Respect, to all involved. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/u...

Spiders - Alex Wild A gallery of true spiders

A gallery of spiders.

A macro photo, side three-quarter view, of a tiger beetle on top of a light-colored rocks. The beetle stands tall on long, thin, stilt-like legs and holds its antennae straight out. It has large, dark compound eyes and lots of white hairs on its underside and legs. Its body is beautifully metallic, showing hues of green, turquoise, blue, orange and copper-brown with cream spots on the wing covers.

Here is your Tuesday Tiger Beetle, I think a Western TB, Cicindela oregona. Tiger beetles pursue prey in a start-stop way, because they run so fast that they must pause to let their visual processing catch up with their feet - literal blinding speed. (Forward-facing antennae also help.) 🐙🌿 #insects

A macro photo looking straight into the face of a jumping spider sitting atop a black and white rock. The spider is boldly marked with bands of black and white hairs on its legs and head, and has a pale tan mask across its eyes and metallic blue-green chelicerae, which end in curved, dark-reddish fangs. The spider is using its palps to clean its large forward-facing eyes, which makes it look like it is playing peekaboo.

🐙🌿Phidippus tyrelli jumping spider, who looks like he's playing peekaboo but is actually using his palps to keep his eyes shiny clean. I like catching jumping spiders doing this, because it's endearing, plus you can better see their colorful chelicerae (mouthparts that end in the fangs). Usually--

Very glad to see Wired covering this. They did a solid ask-around with the #entomology community too. 🧪

I don't think people realize how big this problem has gotten and this is the most thorough examination of I've seen outside of the literature.

A macro photo, vertical orientation, of the head and thorax of a very pale, straw-colored mantis that is in the middle of molting. It hangs upside down in the frame and is seen from the side, against a pure black background at night. A portion of one newly-molted wing is at the very top, still lumpy and wrinkled because it has not yet unfurled.

A mantis in the middle of its final molt, seen at night in Montana recently. The wrinkled lumpy bit at the top is one of its new adult wings, which has yet to unfurl because the insect is still not free of its old exoskeleton. Its color will darken as the new exoskeleton dries as well. 🐙🌿 #insects

A macro photo looking up at a white moth on a thin brown twig, at night against a dark background. The moth has pale tan legs, dark brown eyes, and a pale yellow green cast to its proboscis and the underside of the body, but is otherwise all ghostly white.

Here is your Monday Morning Moth. It's a species in the moth family Geometridae, the moths with caterpillars we often call inchworms - which is easy to remember if you notice that geometer means "earth measure." One inch at a time, presumably.

Owlet playing on the rear windshield wiper! Enjoy! 🪶

This burrowing owlet was just captivated by the moving feather. 🪶