Nature Special: The Marvelous Spatuletail

The Marvelous Spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis) is an endangered hummingbird endemic to northern Peru. It is famous for the male's spectacular tail feathers, featuring two long, wire-like feathers with large, iridescent "spatules", (discs) at the end. They are used in elaborate courtship displays. Males have a blue crown, turquoise throat, and a black stripe down their white chest, while females are less colourful. And have shorter tails with smaller spatules. They inhabit cloud forest edges and scrublands, feeding on nectar from specific flowers, and are a major draw for birdwatchers, with conservation efforts focused on protecting their habitat. Photograph taken by Carlos Altamirano.

 

I Am Pleased That Spelling Standards Have Been Maintained

Even as so many other marks of civilisation
and empathy towards others have fallen
by the wayside on the decades since
Margaret Thatcher left office.

 

Picture Of The Day - The Grey Headed Flying Fox Bat

This is a Grey-headed Flying Fox Bat (Pteropuscpoiocephalus)

                   which is the largest species of bat native to Australia.

               This image shows the bat with her pup clining to her belly.

Picture Of The Day - Reflections Of A Tricoloured Heron

This is a Tricolored Heron (Egretta tricolor)
with material for the nest for itself
and it's partner. 

 

Picture Of The Day: Black Swan

Black swan. Picture Credit: Donna Crandall

 

Well, Hello There....

Temminck’s Lark. From Tumblr

Credit: The Fabulous Weird Trotters

 

Full Moon

A worm moon* in the water,
but how to pluck it out.... 


*The named given to a March moon by native Americans. 

 

This Is Not My New Year Resolution

But it it will happen to me one day,
in the meanwhile I can live and wait.

 

Over-Candid Camera

Where the photographer goes further
than you expect to get that candid shot of you
that you did not expect them to ask you for.
 

 

Donald Trump's Latest Public Venture

 

My Last New Year Card ; Life Is About Looking Up

The underside of a mushroom. Photo by Isabelle Soule.

 

My Fourth Christmas Card Of 2024

Contour plowing, a farming practice that works with the slopes of the land, is an effective means of soil management which helps to prevent soil erosion, Wyoming, United States. Photo by Emory Kristof, National Geographic, July 1976.

 

My Third Christmas Card of 2024

By Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963), French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic.

 

My Second Christmas Card of 2024

'Point in the Bow' as painted in 1927 by Wassily Kandinsky.

With the rise of Nazism Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and his wife Nina Fled Germany. In January 1934 they moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine in a new building indicated to them by Marcel Duchamp. In exile the painter took full part in the artistic activity of the French capital.

Abstract artists welcomed him less than surrealist poets and artists did. He found common cause with Miró, Arp, Breton and Max Ernst, he met his compatriot Marc Chagall, the Romanian Brancusi, Alberto Magnelli, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian too. But ultimately, it was his surrealist friends, in particular Miró and Arp, who most influenced his pictorial development in Paris where he integrated his biomorphic forms into his pictorial vocabulary, to go as far as he could beyond geometric abstraction.

 

A Quiet Blog About Modern Noise

You can always enlarge the text by clicking on it,
and if these lists of names mean little to you
then it matters little, the history of human/creative 
activities is full of irrelevancies for the living to pick over.  

 

My First Christmas Card Of 2024

John Buckland Wright (1897-1954),

wood engraving, 1936 Illustration for Christmas card.

 

When The White Of The Eye

meets the white of the canvas the colour
in both is what connects the heart to the art therein. 

 

Momento Mori

But remember whilst you can
to live before it calls again. 

 

Time And Experience

Because what is at work when we ask for expertise
where the skills and competence take 10,000 hours to learn
and we don't want to/can't pay for that help, and we know
that we need their skills - we will quench the training
we have gained from that will bring the expertise
and experience to the near future. After us.   

 

A Life Tested For Shrinkage

 Will always fall short. Will find both life and shrinkage. And the less serious and less thoughtful the shrinkage, the bigger that shrinkage is. There even laughter seems cheap and diminished, a hollow noise where once life seemed fuller. But when you are the butt of the joke enjoy it. You are still making somebody laugh somewhere, there is always a rich life beyond ourselves, and it will often be richer than we think it is, give others what they need and don't worry about your own shrinkage. It happens to everyone.