tokyo crows

photo by yosuke kashiwakura

honorable mention, national geographic photo contest 2013

photo by brian g. kennedy

photo from here and there japan

photo from present simple

photo from here and there japan

photo by susan fleming

the crows that live in tokyo use clothes hangers to make nests. in such a large city, there are few trees, so the natural materials that crows need to make their nests are scarce. as a result, the crows occasionally take hangers from the people who live in apartments nearby, and carefully assemble them into nests.

penguins in sweaters

new zealand's little blue penguins are the victims of the fuel oil leaking from the rena which went aground around the 5th of october on a reef off the north island of new zealand. about 350 tons of oil have washed ashore on the pristine beaches near tauranga. over 1300 sea birds have already died & some 1,400 tons of heavy fuel oil are still on the ship.
when the little blue penguins come ashore the are covered in oil. when they try to clean their feathers, they ingest toxic oil. so skeinz, a yarn store in new zealand, put out a call to knit sweaters for the birds the australians call "fairy penguins" to protect them from ingesting the poisonous oil.  luckily, everyone heeded the call & the little guys are now kitted out in their little jumpers!  yay for knitters!! & seriously, how adorable do they look? a big hand to all those who knitted the sweaters & sent them in. bravo!

nests: fifty nests and the birds that built them

allen's hummingbird

house wren

american robin

galapago finch

tennessee warbler

golden-hooded tanager

green broadbill

caspian tern

common tailbirds

spotted nightingale

magnolia warbler

house finch

bank swallow

anna's hummingbird

macgillvray's warbler

photographer sharon beals is a self-proclaimed 'urban naturalist'. raised in seattle, she now lives in hunters point shipyard in san francisco. in nests: fifty nests and the birds that built them, beals takes a rare & intimate glimpse of these remarkable creatures, drawing from the collections of the california academy of sciences, the museum of vertebrate zoology at uc berkeley & the western foundation of vertebrate zoology to showcase the most astounding avian architects around the world. i'm obsessed!  you can see more images here.

LOVE

this kills me! if you know how much i love hummingbirds....this just made me feel so happy. le sigh.

dusk

this is the craziness outside my window everyday at dusk. they pretty much show up around 5 a.m. and are here throughout the day but at dusk they all gather and the sound is so amazing.  as you can see, there are 3 birds drinking from the same hole!  i sometimes pull up a chair and just sit there watching these amazing little creatures until night falls and they fly away.

bird

bird by andrew zuckerman. so extraordinary! his first book, creature, is pretty amazing as well. his website is here.

daily visitors

these little guys visit me everyday. they are so beautiful! they make a little buzzing sound and are quite the little piggies....i make the sugar water for them & have gone through bags and bags of sugar. it's worth it though just to watch them. in the other window are finches and doves.

starlings on otmoor

absolutely amazing.