Anne Boyd

Clues in 161-year-old painting help restore Grampians' native beauty Russian artist Nicholas Chevalier's now-famous painting of Mt Abrupt in western Victoria is being used by a revegetation group to reflect the landscape as the artist saw it in 1864.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

I've been seeing a lot of monarchs and a lot of caterpillars this month. Keep planting milkweed, they will come! Both this caterpillar and this newly emerged adult were in new plantings around the just-completed Welcome Center at FDR Park in Philadelphia.

The camera decided to lighten up this image, but in person what it looked like in deep green shade was something very large and *white* fluttering up ahead on the path. Like a semi-transparent ghost.

Funny thing about this photo - not only did I have the audacity to post it as an observation on #iNaturalist, but *multiple* people were then willing to confirm the ID as a Luna Moth. It was in shade on an overcast day way ahead of me on a wooded path, and even with my zoom lens this is all I got...

Darwin and so many other people have had a hypnotic fascination with beetles. Look, I get it, I totally get it. Common green June beetle, Washington Avenue Green, Philadelphia. #beetles #nativeinsects

Red Admiral butterfly on Cutleaf Coneflower. Senate Street, Philadelphia. #nativeplants #butterflies #pollinators

Leafcutter bee on Butterfly Milkweed. Sister Cities Park, Philadelphia. #nativebees #urbanbees

Munchkin barn swallow gives the camera a withering side-eye. John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, June 20, 2025.

Harmful Pesticides Found in Milkweeds from Retail Nurseries | Xerces Society A new study released in Biological Conservation found harmful levels of pesticides in milkweed plants purchased from retail nurseries across the United States. Pesticides were found in all plants test...

Even if that plant hadn't been a mislabeled non-native, never buy milkweed from a big box store! Xerces found many pesticide residues in milkweed plants from retail nurseries - even in plants labeled as pollinator/wildlife friendly. xerces.org/press/harmfu...

Very happy that our new paper in TREE is out today! We call for a paradigm shift in how we build our cities toward evidence-based urban greening. Cities are key battlegrounds in the fight against biodiversity loss but current planning often falls short. We outline the scientific case & a way forward

Spring! I've been out-of-my-mind busy, with unexpected family crises popping up amid the usual gardening frenzy. Nevertheless I'm hoping to get out for the #iNaturalist City Nature Challenge this weekend. So many nesting robins, so little time... (seen here in the streetery at Grace Tavern)

I didn't hear about this project till after it happened, which surprised me because I'm in regular contact with so many Philly native plant advocates. Maybe more outreach to the Philly NP communities that already exist, like the FB groups, Pollinator Pathways, Wild Ones, etc. would help.

(By luck, the friend I was with volunteers with Bird Safe Philly, and we were concerned about that second bird sitting stock-still on the curb. In the end, another volunteer took the bird to the Schuylkill Center to be checked out and recuperate.)

I'm more of a bee and butterfly watcher than a birder, but I do try to identify interesting migrants that I see in Philly. Saturday was the first time I saw a Virginia Rail in the city - and I saw two of them! One in a park, and one on a curb near my home. Neither at all an aquatic environment.

That’s the root, right there: a “deep fear of disability…as a fate somehow worse than contagious disease.”

I don't think people in this thread have grasped that measles is WAY more contagious than COVID. R0 for COVID is thought to be (median) 5.7 and for measles it's about 12-18. Measles has the level of contagiousness that was our worst fear about COVID when it started.

"Hello, we're ready for the check please"

a man playing a violin while another man plays a guitar ALT: a man playing a violin while another man plays a guitar

Movie you've watched more than six times, gifs only

How do you get a wire cage like that for a bird bath? Is it custom made, or is it repurposed from something else? I'm in need of protection for a bird bath!

Yes, this administration is dangerous and cruel, but they are also shockingly dim and incompetent.

Opportunities are everywhere.

Make everything as hard as possible. Resist every demand. Refuse entry without a warrant. Don’t take the buyout. Their problem solving skills are 📉

A small tan snake with a dark pattern on its back is draped over a human hand that's resting on a denim-clad knee.

Happy Year of the Snake! Here's one of the wee snakes that live in the alley behind my Philadelphia row house - Storeria dekayi, or Dekay's brown snake. These absolutely-no-danger noodles are happy in urban environments, eat worms and slugs, and like to hide in rock crevices or maybe flowerpots.

Maybe this dude should read the parts of Project 2025 that detail the Republican’s ideas for NIH. The plan is absolutely to damage our world-leading scientific enterprise. They wrote it down.

Email to the Trump DEI snitch line complaining that Trump and Vance and people are illegal federal hires because they got their jobs solely because of their race and gender.

I don’t care. Fuck these McCarthyite bastards.

I like my new glasses from Warby Parker just fine, but how many more pairs of prescription progressives ($$) does Warby Parker think I'm in the market for at the moment? "Get them in every color!" "Frames for every mood and every outfit!"

Or the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens MADISON, WI—In the hours following a violent rampage in Wisconsin in which a lone attacker killed at least two individuals and injured six others, citizens living in the only country where this kind o...

The 39th time we've had to post this, and this time about The Onion's original hometown.

Two large raccoons at night on a small patio, one on the ground and one in the top of a worm bin with its lid knocked off.

Hello, police? I'd like to report a robbery. What was taken? Well, some percentage of the red wigglers in my worm bin...

Endangered Species Act protection for monarch butterfly | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing protection for one of the nation’s most beloved species - the monarch butterfly - and is encouraging the public to be part of its recovery. The Service ...

Fish and Wildlife Service seeks to list monarchs as threatened under the endangered species act:

www.fws.gov/press-releas...

I clicked expecting almost every state to have a honeybee or a monarch but it's not as bad as you imply! I am fully on board with the Carolina Mantis and Tarantula Hawkmoth as options, among various fireflies. Or are you objecting to too many buttterflies overall?

This picture is a Viceroy butterfly, not a Monarch. journeynorth.org/tm/monarch/V...