Lauren

Digital illustration of a nosa' luta, a small yellow-green songbird with a white ring of feathers around the eye, and an orange beak and feet. This bird is drawn with its wings spread and feet held at the ready, about to land on an unseen branch. The background is a loose blur of colors similar to those in the canopy on Rota - bright yellows and greens, with hints of blue from the yoga berries abundant in this species' habitat.

Nosa' luta (Rota White-eye, Zosterops rotensis), illustrated for future use in my own reports/publications/whatever involving this species and other birds of Rota, CNMI. Endemic to the island, critically endangered, and full of boisterous energy 🎨🪶🐡🌏

Realizing I should include the main things you should do to support native bees/other insects

1) Plant native plants
2) Don't use pesticides, and tell your friends and neighbors to stop using pesticides
3) Leave fallen leaves in the winter
4) Leave dead stems over winter for overwintering critters

Did you know that the bees that need saving are NOT honeybees?

Honeybees are the dairy cows of bees. People brought them over from Europe to make us honey.

The problem with honeybees, esp in resource-limited ecosystems (like hey! cities!) is that they compete with our native bees for food.

Digital painting of a Saipan Reed-Warbler. This brownish bird has a long curved beak, short wings, and long tail. Its head and throat feathers look loose and ruffled while this bird sings at full volume. It clings sideways to a stalk of bright green reed grass.

Ga'ga karisu, Saipan Reed-Warbler (Acrocephalus hiwae) is a critically endangered species found in the Northern Mariana Islands. Though few remain due to habitat loss, they fill the air with their rich melodic songs in those places where they can still hold on. 🎨🪶🐡🌎

The reason the Pacific Northwest has such lush forests is because of salmon! They bring nutrients from the sea inland, and when they are eaten by predators or die upstream, the nutrients get redistributed to the plants, promoting more growth.

if you tell an artist "i want a print of that!" and then you actually DO buy the print when they put it up for sale, you WILL enter the kingdom of heaven. this is, in fact, the only way to get in

Recluse spiders (Araneae: Sicariidae): contesting myths on distribution, bite behavior, and medical risk in Florida Abstract. Recluse spiders are arachnids of potential medical significant due to their necrotic venom. However, in areas populated by the brown recluse, Lox

Brown recluse spiders exonerated! In Florida, recluses are rare, much less likely to bite than other spiders, even when provoked, and the one verified bite did not produce necrosis.

Digital painting of a Golden White-eye, a yellow bird with an orange beak and legs, perched on a tree branch. It is facing left and looking slightly downward as if curiously eyeing a delicious berry or unknown insect.

Before I head back to Rota, I will be on Saipan for a few days. Canario here (Golden White-eye) is an endangered species found only on Saipan and Aguijan, though it probably was also on Tinian and Rota in the past. Their thrush-like habits and songs are very unlike most other white-eyes. 🎨🪶🐡🌏

Art traaain!
4 works
4 tags
Don't forget to include alt text!

@whistberry.bsky.social
@moomooofdoom.bsky.social
@tinylongwing.bsky.social
@doodlesbycharlie.bsky.social

a pair of female eurasian bullfinches foraging through bushy fields. the finch on the right has some flower seeds in it's mouth.

a couple of female eurasian bullfinches foraging through bushes 🍃 i haven't worked with gouache in a minute, but fell in love all over again with this piece

Graphic with two parts, a map and a chart. Top section: A map showing intact tropical forests in northern South America, most of them in the Amazon River basin. Three locations are called out: 1 is in Panama; 2 is on the eastern border of Ecuador, near the borders with Colombia and Peru; and 3 is in Brazil, on the Amazon River. Undisturbed tropical forest areas are defined as areas where no disturbances were detected in a comparison of satellite imagery from 1990 to 2024. Bottom section: Dot plot with confidence intervals. For each of the three map locations, the chart shows the average annual change in mist net captures for insectivores and for the total bird community. For all three locations, the average annual change for insectivores is in the negative and is lower than for the total bird community.

Intact tropical forests are seeing mysterious bird declines. Is another “silent spring” brewing?

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4aCs0Er

Another small Condor oil painting. "Ugly" vulture heads are fun to paint!

frontal view of a jumping spider with orange spindly legs and ornately patterned abdomen in blue and red. watercolor painting.

night view of a waterside environment with a shiny dark blue beetle in the foregeround, perched on a stem, surrounded by flowers. there's a bright full moon in the sky. traditional media art

shining iridescent beetle in black, green, and purple, pixel art

frontal view of a green caterpillar with four antler-like protrusions coming out of its headshield, surrounded by star-shaped elements and the moon in the dark foreground

Fourth batch #SciArt

Siler semiglaucus jumping spider @jencmars.bsky.social
Altica metallic flea beetle @acidlich.bsky.social
Amarygmus darkling beetle @spiritcrowart.bsky.social
Charaxes caterpillar @mothmonarch.bsky.social

Happy Twin Peaks day to all who celebrate

We got them DENSE BRAINS baby

White brick building with round window stands behind two tall pines.

Latest painting..

Forest’s Edge (oil and acrylic on canvas)

Yeah it's just now starting its first prebasic molt so hasn't really had time for a big noticeable color change on the body yet (those new feathers are coming in though for sure), but have a look at the wings and see that slight notch/gap at the first primaries where they're just starting to molt.

But yeah not easy for me to check right now as both of the books I have that deal with raptor molt are on the other side of the planet lmao

Haha yeah I'm not super around right now, I'm on vacation before fieldwork! I don't have access to my books right now. That lower bird is currently molting flight feathers and typically most raptors don't start that until they're over a year old, so I would expect that bird hatched 2024.

3 more page mockups. The first looks at the topic of insect wings, with a large moth, butterfly, cranefly earwing and stick insect. The second looks at the 2 types of metamorphosis, and the 3rd is a page full of beetles.

After yesterday's nice feedback, here are another couple of spreads from my concept book.

A landscape page with a pale green background and two illustrations of Ginkgo on it. On the left is an inaccurate one with leaves coming directly from a branch. On the right is an accurate one with clusters extending from short shoots.

I, too, would like to have a go at the new Spinosaurus soon, but in the meantime:
Here's a slide from my recent talk, which covers the DOs and DON'Ts of restoring ginkgoes within palaeoart!
Enjoy! #Ginkgo #FossilFriday #paleobotany #paleoart #SciComm

Haha yeah she's more the normal peachy color of a Yellow-shafted Flicker but without the yellow underwings. Yellow weirdo is just kinda a little bit extra-yellow all over in places he normally shouldn't be! I like Car Alarm Siren though lmao

Haha, it's the male who is all over kind of yellow-tinted, bottom of the third column

Chart featuring the heads of ten Northern Flickers. Text at top reads "October 2025-February 2026 intergrade and aberrant Northern Flickers". Each individual flicker is illustrated with its unique head pattern, including moustache color, face color, crown color, and presence or absence of red on the nape. Each bird also has a date it was first recorded (month and year), is marked male or female, and has a swatch showing the underwing color. There are five females and five males and each one of them is distinctly identifiable because of its combination of traits.

Here's this winter's full cast of characters! Lots of new intergrade N. Flickers at my backyard feeders this year, not so many returning from previous years, though there are a few. "Yellow" has been an especially unusual standout.

See reply for what makes these birds special.

🎨🪶🧪 #BirdArt #SciArt

Glad you enjoyed it!

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide.

This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

We're horseposting post your horses.

You can completely uninstall/disable copilot on Windows. Your system and local search will run faster afterward. www.howtogeek.com/how-to-rip-o...

And here are last year's birds, for comparison: bsky.app/profile/tiny...

Northern Flickers come in two main types - Red-shafted (primarily western) and Yellow-shafted (primarily eastern). There is a broad area where these birds meet and intergrade, producing these patterns. They are not hybrids, as they are the same species:

ebird.org/region/US-OR...