animal
This species of duck is native to Africa and is ubiquitous throughout the continent, except in deserts and deep forest. It is not native but nonetheless ubiquitous in many parts of Europe, especially England, where it was introduced more than three centuries ago and has thrived in town and countryside to such an extent that it was added last year to the official national list of animal pests. This picture was taken recently in London.
The birds are known as Egyptian Geese, despite the fact that they are ducks, not geese. Apparently, they have a heavy-looking habit of flight that makes them look goose-like in the air.
It's been a while since we've served up puppies or babies in this space, so here's the Dobster, hopping about on two wet feet.
Maybe the gingerbread man was in that Folger's coffee can?
Government photographer John Vachon immortalized this scene while he was doing his Farm Security Administration work in Minnesota and the Dakotas in the spring of 1940. But he didn't record any explanations.
Baby Goat, by Avram Dumitrescu, our very own Romanian Irish Texan painter. Click through for Avram's story and some more of his paintings.
Dobby the dog says: Why wait for spring?
Believe it or not, there are in this world orangutans who just don't know what orangutans need to know. There are also orangutans who know full well how to be orangutans but who because of injury or illness can't get with the program. There are also orangutans who know how to be orangutans and are able and willing to live the orangutan life but who've lost their habitat.
On their own in the wild, these unfortunate orangutans are not going to make it. But if they are somehow directed to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center just outside of Sandakan, on the north coast of Borneo, even they can live happily ever after.
Sepilok is basically a feeding station with no walls; orangutans can eat there forever, come and go at will, or hang around for a while and then give life in the jungle a try. There's also a nursery for orphaned babies, who grow up unafraid of humans or orangutans; by growing up in orangutan paradise in the company of numerous adult orangutans, the orphans have a good shot at learning all the good stuff about orangutan ways.
This fellow certainly looks like proof of concept.
Even so, we should maybe check the locks.
This is somebody's side door near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia.
A bee pollinates a lotus water lily in the Orchid Garden in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Some people think it's been way too long since the last cute puppy picture, so . . . here's Stella, looking up at us from Michele Manno's lap. Clearly, the leopard-print fabric doesn't fool her for a minute.
This is an ibex, photographed by Ruggero Barsacchi on safari in . . . Italy.
I guess I didn't know my ibex from my keister. To me, this guy looks like African big game, maybe an antelope sort of creature that might even give a lion a hard time. Nope. You're looking at lo stambecco, the mountain goat of the Italian Alps.
Ibexes are not really big enough to take on lions, but at 100 kilograms or more, with horns up to a meter in length, a full-grown male ibex can do a number on a wolf. Prized medicinally--almost all its body parts and also its excrement were said to cure whatever ails you--by the early nineteenth century it had been hunted almost to extinction. Ibex herds are now protected and have grown dramatically; the species is no longer considered particularly endangered.
