jenny linsky

Silhouette of a hummingbird perched on a bare branch amid bare trees and a blank grey sky. Hummingbird on a cornelian cherry tree (oak in background on the left).

New year
Nice bird

Photo of a Santa Claus ornament on the floor, in the lower left of the frame. It's a full body Santa on its back. The upper right of the frame has a lower branch of a tree with a sparkly decoration and a red and white tree skirt. The floor has many visible bits of pine needles. The whole thing looks more like a crime scene than a holiday photo, as if all that Santa lacks is a chalk outline.

First time I've seen someone using the same app for the 🐝 that I do! Nice!

Grainy B&W photograph of a dog, wearing glasses and sitting upright like a person with his paws on the steering wheel of a car. The dog has a cigarette in his mouth, and is looking at you over the tops of his glasses. The expression in his eyes might be one of casual snobbery. But his ears are back, and overall, he looks unsure. He is caught between the Rock of looking cool as hell & the Hard Place of knowing that cigarettes are bad for his health, and that he is setting a bad example for the kids. Dogs are, as a rule, not great at dealing with moral failure, because they don't believe in it. The caption reads: "This German police dog, owned by Ailisa Mellon, daughter of the secretary of the treasury, certainly is the eel's eyebrows. He smokes cigarettes, wears spectacles, and poses for photographs. Which is something." Not for nothing: the phrase "Which is something." is a high-quality coda that all academics should consider adding to the end of their articles, monographs, & talks.

Do you need some direction in your post-Christmas life? Well...

First: sit back & enjoy this dog from 1923, described as "the eel's eyebrows."* Then: ask yourself what you can do today to earn such adoration? Now: go forth to glory!

*Not eels'. ONE eel's eyebrows. THE eel.
🗃️🧪

1. Less, please, less!

Photo of a rustic looking cupboard with stacks of books on top and a grey cat occupying the space where a drawer should be.

The Duke was a special cat. One of many pics of him in random spots.
#caturday
#cat

Grayscale illustration of a kettle in a microwave. The microwave door is open. The kettle is sitting inside. The spout of the kettle looks like the side view of an animal face, maybe a snake, so the the water would pour out the mouth; the spout face has an eye and is also wearing a hat.

Yesterday I wanted to make tea. I filled the kettle and tried to put it in the microwave.
#longcovid
#MECFS

A narrow branch on the ground surrounded by caramel colored mushrooms, brown fall leaves, acorns, lichen and moss on fallen bark and twigs, and some bright green threads of Bermuda grass. Everything is damp from the last rain.

Fall photo from the backyard - love the fallen branches, leaves, twigs, acorns and the way that lichen, moss, mushrooms look so good after the rain, but I'm dismayed by the Bermuda grass.

All About Feed magazine cover, this issue has a picture of a white chicken eating from a metal trough containing some kind of insect, there is an insect in the chicken's beak. The chicken has dead eyes and a pale comb. This issue features an interview with Marcel Dicke about insect feed "paving the way" for "sustainable feed"

At least BeefWatch sounds cool (from a sometime reader of All About Feed)

Pair of standard looking black flies mating on what I think is a leaf of "trout's back" lettuce. The male is in focus and his eyes are really visible, the female is more softly focused.

Perfect opportunity to share my only fly sex pic! Probably could have cropped less, wish they were both in focus

Screenshot showing an illustration of a chicken wearing a headset with the title "our new chatbot" and in smaller text "Sanderson Farms launches chicken chatbot tool" and in even smaller text "Sandy is powered by OpenAI for ChatGPT" Apparently the chat chicken is named Sandy.

AI chicken!

Unfortunately in the least amusing way (chicken recipes).

Why are so many food mascots characterized as the food itself?

Is it that we will feel less bad eating a factory chicken if another chicken is complicit?

Photo of an ambush bug (on the left) and its prey (on the right). The ambush bug is an orangey-tan color and is classified as a true bug. The prey is a smaller shiny black winged insect (that I did not identify but assume a beneficial pollinator). The ambush bug has its (for my lack of better vocabulary) snout stuck into the prey. They are perched on the petal of a white cosmos flower (you probably can't tell from the pic since it is very zoomed in).

In 2020 I spent a lot of time photographing bugs in our yard.

Ambush bugs are fascinating predators. As the name implies, they hide out in a popular floral spot, waiting until the right moment for a surprise attack (sadly, pollinators for the most part).

Zoom in to check out the yellow eye!
#bugs

I love the good morning bugs so much! Thanks for continuing to post them.

Same!!!!

guys. there was a whole movie about this.

I can remember browsing in that Nordstrom, feels like another life ago. So strange.

Oh! I should have said up front that I found her lethargic and puffed with eyes closed and with pieces of eggshell trailing out of her vent

Long term I would like to switch back to organic feed so I need to find something that will work for her to get enough calcium. Unfortunately she is my smartest hen and I had to medicate her once 3 years ago and she has not forgotten and will not take anything the slightest bit suspicious from me!

Finally, vet recommended Purena Layena feed as the calcium there is supposedly more digestible. I normally feed organic so was reluctant to change, but decided to see if it would help - her shells are thicker now so it does seem to be doing the trick

Apparently it is more difficult to lay a weak egg than a strong one, and she would have potentially strained to try to pass the pieces.
Of course by the time the vet saw her, she was already on the mend - I also gave her fluids which I think helped her recover as she was refusing food & water

The vet thought that she was having trouble assimilating calcium as the eggshell was very thin (hence breaking in the way out) and none of the rest of my flock have issues (and I use layer feed and provide oyster shell).

When They Hear Plants Crying, Moths Make a Decision (Gift Article) A new study suggests that the insects rely on the sounds made by distressed vegetation to guide important reproductive choices.

Moths can hear the clicking wails of a sad, dry, injured plant.

And they run the other way to lay their eggs. Totally wild to think how many things around us are communicating in ways we cannot even comprehend! www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/s...

Causation or correlation? I can't deny the facts of the case

She looks pretty healthy in that pic, but earlier that day she was classic sick chicken (lethargic, all puffed up, eyes closed) and had broken eggshell trailing out of her vent.
She recovered just fine.

Photo of a black chicken (with some green iridescence on her feathers) standing on a scale in the exam room of a small animal veterinary practice.

Nibsy, being super cooperative at the vet.
Thankful to have a vet near me that treats chickens.

#chickens
#veterinarian

Peppermint!

A hand drawn maze with an opening at the top left that has a stick person a stick person and the words "start here." The exit of the maze is at the bottom right with the words "get what you need here". The maze features three vortexes of doom signified by black ovals at the center of some swirled corridors. Despite superficial appearances, the maze cannot be completed - all paths lead to doom.

How it feels to navigate health and insurance bureaucracies
#longcovid
#MECFS

Thanks for posting, I was wondering what was going on!

Weevils! So many adorable weevils to choose from. Wait are weevils technically bugs?

Two potter wasp nests. They are grey in color, rounded, and at the top a small narrowed lip with an outward flare - they truly look like pottery! The nests are attached to the side of a sheltered wooden structure (actually a mason bee house with the bee infrastructure removed).

Super cool Potter Wasp nests in our backyard.

These are tiny nests for one egg that the female will have "provisioned" with paralyzed beetle larva, caterpillars, or spiders.

Adults are pollinators.