Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Mark Sturtevant has sent us some cicada pictures for today. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Early in the 2024 season, several midwestern and southern states in the US had a very special event in the form of two different broods of periodical cicadas that were to have a simultaneous mass emergence.
Periodical cicadas (Magicicada sp.) are classified into several different species, although they all look pretty identical. Some species have a 13-year life cycle, while others have a 17-year life cycle. It was a major bucket-list item for me to see my first such emergence (of 17-year cicadas) a few years earlier, so I knew what to expect. There are several different broods of 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas, and each is given a Roman numeral designation.
The 2024 season was to have brood number XIII (which are 17-year), and brood number XIX (which are 13-year), emerging at the same time and in ranges that abut each other in the state of Illinois. One could see one, do a short drive, and see the other! The last time this simultaneous emergence happened was in 1803. So of course ‘ol Mark took a little vacation in May, drove several hours, and photographed cicadas within screaming forests that were loaded with probably 100,000s’ of the insects.
I started with the more northern brood of 17-year cicadas. Skirting along the southern boundary of Chicago, it was obvious that they were already out there since I could see them flying in large numbers around the cars along the highway.
Here is but one of the 17-year species from a park just south of Chicago.
Here are several of them:
I could see cicadas all the way up in the trees, and up there they were flying back and forth. Everywhere. Here is a cellphone recording that I made, but the sound does not do justice unless you turn it up to LOUD and put the speaker next to your ear.
One detail in the recording is that you can hear some of different kinds of sounds that they make, including the famous “Phaaaaarrroah” song. After I had returned to the silence of a well sound-proofed car, my ears were still ringing.
Here are 13-year cicadas from a park farther to the south. Is there a difference between the species?:
There were signs of predation. It is thought that through mass emergence between long intervals of staying underground, periodical cicadas are able to overwhelm their predators who cannot then adapt to them.
And somewhat finally, I had a 13-year stowaway in the car on the drive back to the hotel. So I picked up a 17-year outside the hotel and stitched together this picture of the two together. According to my notes, the 17-year is on the left, and the 13-year is on the right. I hope that is right! There are small differences, but I don’t know if they are inter- species differences or what.
The safari felt like a bit of an accomplishment, so I got this cool t-shirt to commemorate the event:
There are several websites to help you plan a trip to see one of these wonders of the natural world. Here is a Wikipedia page with information about the several different broods in the U.S., including a map and the years that they are expected.
Of course you may live in the area of one, and then you will have no choice but to enjoy it!
Good morning on Sunday, October 26; it’s the Sabbath for goyische cats and National Mule Day. Let us pay homage to these largely sterile hybrids, who have historically done a ton of hard work. (They are often cited in textbooks as THE example of hybrid sterility, but a few fertile mules have been described.)
The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey and a horse. It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes; of the two possible first-generation hybrids between them, the mule is easier to obtain and more common than the hinny, which is the offspring of a male horse (a stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny).
Here are five reasons why mules are better than horses for some purposes:
It’s also National Pumpkin Day, National Mincemeat Day, and Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day. Here I am eating the steak—in Texas—two decades ago. Note that the sweet tea is served on one-quart Mason jars, the only appropriate kind vessel. And, of course, the steak is gigantic (I did finish it).
*The U.S. government shutdown is now nearly a month long, the second longest in history (so far it’s shorter than the 34-day shutdown involving the border wall during Trump’s first term). The issue this time, of course, is extending health-insurance subsidies that were supposed to end this year, and the Democrats won’t sign on to the end until they’re renewed. The WaPo’s morning email (not online) answers questions about the shutdown, and here are a few:
Do members of Congress get paid during a government shutdown?
Yes, members of Congress are paid during a government shutdown — because the Constitution says so. Article I, section 6 states: “The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.” Some lawmakers choose to have their salaries withheld during shutdowns.
Do government shutdowns save money?
Government shutdowns actually cost money — and a lot of it. The longest shutdown in U.S. history lasted 34 days, and it shaved $11 billion off the U.S.’s total economic output. The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, citing research from investment bank Goldman Sachs, says the current shutdown could cost the U.S. economy $15 billion per week.
When shutdowns end, it’s also expensive to get the government fully operating again. Furloughed workers are entitled to back pay. They have to dig out from a mountain of tasks that piled up while they were away. The federal government may have forfeited fees or revenue when it was closed. And because the government didn’t make some payments during the shutdown, it could owe late fees and interest.
Does Trump actually have more authority to fire federal workers during a shutdown than he otherwise would?
Good question. The answer is a firm no.
Trump already has a lot of power to fire federal employees, provided the administration follows the process necessary to conduct government layoffs, also called “reductions in force” or RIFs. A shutdown makes that more difficult. It’s harder to follow the steps to conduct a RIF since many employees are furloughed. Plus, laying people off costs money — and the government generally isn’t allowed to take on new spending during a shutdown.
A good way to think of it: A shutdown doesn’t give Trump any additional power to fire federal workers, but it doesn’t take away from his already substantial power, either.
Is the shutdown slowing or stopping the president’s priorities, such as construction of the White House ballroom, domestic military deployments or immigration raids?
Nah, those aren’t stopping. The ballroom is being funded by private donations, not taxpayer funds. The personnel deployed to U.S. cities are considered “essential” and during most shutdowns would work unpaid. The same goes for the officers conducting immigration raids. The White House repurposed funds from the Defense Department and Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” to compensate those service members and officers, though it’s unclear if those moves were legal.
The last point is important, and I assume there’s a lawsuit pending about the legality of paying cops and National Guard troops and other federal agents. So far it looks like this is going to become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, as there’s no sign of Dems or Republicans wanting to forget a compromise—or even meet.
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that an international security force that has yet to be formed would take the lead on disarming Hamas, which has been one of the thorniest issues when it comes to reaching a lasting peace in Gaza.
The vice president spoke from Israel, at the end of a visit aimed at shoring up a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. In remarks to reporters, Mr. Vance cautioned that the task of disarming Hamas — which the militant group has long opposed — was “going to take some time and it’s going to depend a lot on the composition of that force.”
The cease-fire deal that came into effect earlier this month was based on a proposal outlined in September by President Trump, which includes a stipulation that a “temporary International Stabilization Force” be deployed in Gaza. But several countries have hesitated to commit troops to such a force because its exact mission in the devastated Palestinian enclave was unclear. The possibility that such a force might be drawn into direct conflict with Hamas fighters has also been a worry.
While Mr. Vance did not address that concern in his brief remarks on Thursday, he reiterated that there would be “no American troops on the ground” in Gaza. Instead, he said, American personnel would be “supervising and mediating the peace.”
The 20-point peace proposal did not specify that the security force would be tasked with disarming Hamas, and a timeline for doing so has not been laid out. The force was originally envisioned as a way to secure areas of Gaza where Israeli troops have withdrawn, prevent munitions from entering the territory, facilitate the distribution of aid and train a Palestinian police force.
, , , , The vice president departed Israel just hours before Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the country. Mr. Rubio met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Thursday night.
On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio addressed the proposed creation of an international force. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before he flew to Israel, he said that the Trump administration may seek a United Nations “mandate” for the force.
The back-to-back visits by Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio underscore the administration’s keen interest in preserving the cease-fire. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have also been in Israel this week.
Show me one country in the world, much less the Israel-hating UN itself, that would be willing to be interim “peacekeepers” in Gaza. And yes, of course those forces would be fighting Hamas, for if Hamas wouldn’t disarm for Israel, it’s not going to disarm for anyone. (Read points 9 and 13 of Trump’s outline for peace in Gaza.) No, the war is not over, and will not be until Hamas agrees to lay down its arms. And there’s no sign that this will happen.
*This week Andrew Sullivan muses on NYT’s next mayor in a column called “Magic Mamdani theory,” with the subtitle, “Doing politics the right way, he offers a woke, far-left future for the Dems. Fuck.” The last word reflects Sullivan’s dismay at a candidate who is appealing but likely not effective.
I get why Mamdani is popular. And I have little doubt he will be the next mayor, as well as a major national figurehead for the Democrats — a nice dose of youth to a party debilitated by seniorityitis. He will define the Democrats nationally — certainly if the GOP has any say in it. And in many ways, he is the perfect candidate for today’s Dem elites: wealthy, woke, with a degree in “Africana studies.” His only problem is not being female — but since he denies that the category of female exists, no big deal I suppose. He will give the MSNBC/Bulwark crowd a new lease on self-righteousness.
But to be honest, when I read his proposals, at first I thought I was reading a high-schooler’s essay. Free everything! I mean: why not? Free universal childcare for kids as young as six weeks old.Free buses for everyone. Rent control for everyone already privileged by it. Subsidized collective supermarkets. $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030 — up from $16.50. Woohoo! And arresting Bibi as an added bonus. (I have to say the last plank might even tempt me to vote for him.)
The problem, of course, is how to pay for it. And a NYC mayor, quite simply, cannot. Mamdani simply won’t have the power. None of the tax hikes he proposes — a new 2 percent tax on everyone earning over $1 million a year, and jacking up the corporate tax to 11.5 percent — can be passed by his council. Albany has the final say, will almost certainly say no, and the Democratic governor, Hochul, opposes the hikes.
So a lot of this is purely performative, no? He has a good chance to create his Soviet bodegas and, in all likelihood, freeze rents if he replaces members of the board. (That will, of course, make housing availability and expense even worse.) He may be able to wangle some increase in NYC’s minimum wage — by trying to bypass Albany. But doubling it in five years? Meh. All of the economic stuff is iffy because of the very probable lack of funding. Maybe a big victory will change the dynamics and allow a big tax hike in one of the most highly taxed cities on earth. But it’s hard to believe it.
So what’s left? What’s left is cultural leftism on hormones. You may get daycare — but it will come with full woke indoctrination of kids from the earliest years on. No more “boys”or “girls” allowed! Mamdani, as we all know, regards the police as the enforcers of “white supremacy,” supports the end of Israel as a Jewish state, will subsidize the transing of children with no safeguards, and has erased gays and lesbians from our own history, re-marginalizing us as “queers”. There’s no one the woke left hates more than an empowered and integrated person who just happens to be gay or lesbian.
Like all good critical-theory racists, Mamdani believes in a racial hierarchy with whites, Jews, and Asians as oppressors, and blacks and Hispanics and “queers” as victims;he wants to make NYC “the strongest sanctuary city in the country” — i.e. go to war with ICE — and kill the educational programs that help gifted poor kids in kindergarten — because most turn out to be of the oppressor races. A racist, in other words — to his fingertips.
. . . In 2022, Mamdani declared of his political career: “For me, there’s no point in doing this without D.S.A.” The Democratic Socialists of America favor full amnesty for all illegal immigrants, abolition of the Senate, voting rights for noncitizens, and public ownership of major corporations. Since he won the nomination, he has softened on some of these points, but remains a DSA member and fan. New Yorkers can decide if he’s sincere. Obviously I don’t believe a word he says about moderation.
Mamdani cannot be President, of course (he was born in Uganda), but he could be–and probably wants to be–a Senator or Representative. I don’t like his stand on Israel, of course, and I also think that Sullivan and many others are right; he will not be able to fulfill his economic promises. But that doesn’t bother many Democrats, who want a “progressive” rather than someone who actually creates positive change. I don’t believe Mamdani cares about the welfare of New Yorkers, but that’s just my take. I think he cares about advancing a DSA ideology. BUT, if he can do what he says, more power to him.
Again and again in Chicago and elsewhere in recent weeks, masked federal agents have accosted people who appear to be Latino, and have confronted them with questions about their immigration status.
Targeting people for immigration enforcement based on race or ethnicity alone was forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision 50 years ago. After all, it’s impossible to determine the immigration statuses of people simply by looking at them. So for decades, agents seeking to question people about their citizenship were supposed to rely on more than just appearance.
But as President Trump has intensified his mass deportation campaign, roving patrols that have targeted predominantly Latino communities have become a key part of the administration’s playbook. And whether the tactics are legal appears to be an open question, one likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Lawsuits challenging the administration’s sweeps in Los Angeles and elsewhere are making their way through the courts. The outcomes could redefine the limits on the discretion officers have to stop, question and detain people over their immigration statuses and how much race and ethnicity can play into those decisions.
. . . . Last month, in an emergency ruling in the Los Angeles suit, the Supreme Court said federal agents there could question people about their immigration statuses based solely on factors such as race or ethnicity or another spoken language or accented English.
The decision isn’t final, as it overturned the temporary prohibition imposed by a federal judge on officers while she hears arguments on the case. But like many of the justices’ emergency decisions since the start of the new administration, the ruling appeared to signal substantial deference to the executive branch under President Trump and the possibility that the court would ultimately side with him should it ultimately issue an opinion on the case.
. . . During the mass deportation campaign, Latinos have been stopped while driving gardening and landscaping trucks. They have been questioned and detained at bus stops and street corners where laborers gather to wait for work. They have been rounded up at farms, carwashes and construction sites.
. . . In Chicago, where ICE tactics have escalated in recent weeks, lawyers say they have identified dozens of arrests that have violated a 2022 consent decree that covered six Midwestern states. The order — stemming from a 2018 class-action lawsuit that immigrant and civil rights groups filed against the first Trump administration on behalf of five immigrants — restricted federal immigration agents from apprehending and holding people without a warrant.
I can’t believe the Supreme Court won’t revisit this case if the judge in Los Angeles decides the detentions are illegal. The latest Supreme Court term, which began this month, is going to be an interesting one as well as a busy one for the judges. All we can do is wait and see, while in the meantime people get detained and deported, perhaps illegally.
*The World Series this year, with game 2 on deck, pits the Toronto Blue Jays against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with the Dodgers harboring the deadly Shohei Ohtani. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost last night, despite one homer from their star.
Shohei Ohtani followed his two-way show for the ages with a homer in the Dodgers’ World Series opener, but he also grounded out with the bases loaded in Los Angeles’ 11-4 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night.
With LA trailing 11-2 in the seventh inning, Ohtani hit a soaring two-run shot to right field off Braydon Fisher. It was his fourth homer in two games after connecting three times and striking out 10 as a pitcher in a Game 4 win to clinch the Dodgers’ NL Championship Series.
Ohtani’s homer Friday didn’t do much for Los Angeles’ chances after a flop by the Dodgers’ pitchers. Starter Blake Snell was knocked out of the game before getting an out in the sixth inning, and Toronto then pummeled the bullpen during a nine-run sixth highlighted by Addison Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam and Alejandro Kirk’s two-run homer.
Ohtani also missed an earlier chance to impact the game with his two-out, bases-loaded groundout in the second inning. Los Angeles led 1-0 at that point. He finished 1 for 4 with two strikeouts.
Blue Jay fans booed Ohtani loudly during pregame introductions. Before signing a $700 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the two-way star met with Blue Jays officials on Dec. 4, 2023, at the team’s spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida. Toronto manager John Schneider joked Thursday that he wanted Ohtani to return a Blue Jays hat and a jacket for his dog, Decoy, that he took after that meeting.
Booing Ohtani? That’s not sportsmanlike, but Toronto is mad they didn’t get him. He not only grounded out, but he also whiffed twice. Here’s one of his strikeouts. Look at how the ball drops at the end!
Well, the guy ain’t perfect, and there are at least three games to go. UPDATE: Yesterday the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-1,
UPDATE: Yesterday the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-1, tying the Series at 1-1. Pitcher Yoshinabu Yamomoto went the full nine innings (a real rarity these days), allowing four hits but only one run. Ohtani scored one run, and is surely being saved to pitch a later game.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej discuss an “artificial civilization,” whatever that is.
Hili: What will an artificial civilization look like? Andrzej: Fortunately, I won’t be around to find out.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak będzie wyglądała sztuczna cywilizacja?
Ja: Na szczęście ja się już tego nie dowiem.
Masih and JKR are both quiet (Rowling hasn’t tweeted in at least a week), but Titania did! Here’s her tweet. According to an appended “Community note,” the BBC got it wrong:
The perpetrator is not just “a man who lived in a hotel”, he is an illegal migrant called Qais Al-Aswad. He is originally from Syria.
I’m delighted to see that my headline-writing workshops for BBC sub-editors have yielded excellent results. https://t.co/Iwe8mwg1Sm
The BBC story is archived here (is the Beeb paywalled now?). One bit:
During sentencing, the judge told the court that Al-Aswad, who will now reside in Essex, claimed to be unfamiliar with UK laws regarding physical contact and suggested the brakes on his bicycle were faulty.
From Malcolm, a golden tree. 2 billion Hong Kong dollars is $257 million US.
From Simon. The guy dissing Larry the Cat is apparently, as Simon explains, “Andrew Marr – long time hournalist and broadcaster. I suspect his comments re Larry are somewhat tongue in cheek furthering a broader political agenda.”
Also from Simon, a tweet from Lawrence Krauss. Some atheist-hater, no doubt:
From Colin Wright via Luana:
🚨BREAKING: A federal court has struck down the Biden-era rule redefining “sex” in federal law to include “gender identity.”
The judge ruled that only Congress—not federal agencies—can change the meaning of “sex,” restoring its original biological definition under the Affordable… pic.twitter.com/aa5GRdf8KI
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. One of these would do well for my morning coffee:
Marvellous Minoan cups made by Bronze Age potters about 3,800 years ago!Which is your favourite? ❤️ Heraklion Archaeological Museum 📷 by me 🏺#Archaeology
If you didn’t dislike Trump before (I doubt we have anyone here who didn’t), this is the cherry on the Sundae of Hate. Trump has dissed Republican NYC mayor candidate Curtis Sliwa (misspelled “Curtin” in the story), because Sliwa has a well known love of cats. As we know, anybody who doesn’t like cats can’t be trusted, and so we have one more instantiation of that claim. Click below to read:
An excerpt before we get to the video (bolding is mine):
President Donald Trump mocked Republican New York City mayoral candidate Curtin [sic] Sliwa Sunday for his admiration for cats, refusing to endorse him in the race and alleging he intended on turning the governor’s mansion into a refuge for felines.
Sliwa is running to defeat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, but has struggled in the race and polled at a distant third, with Mamdani showing a strong double-digit lead.
Trump was asked by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Saturday if he would consider making an endorsement in the race, specifically if he would endorse Sliwa, whose affinity for cats is well documented, having once owned 17 at once.
“Well, I don’t know. Is he really a Republican, am I a big fan? This isn’t exactly ideal where he wants to make Gracie Mansion a home for the cats,” Trump said, referencing New York City’s historic residence for New York City’s mayors. “Gracie Mansion is a magnificent home of Fiorello La Guardia, and the great mayor Rudy Giuliani, Giuliana was the greatest mayor in the history of New York, he did a great job!”
. . . Trump has railed against Mamdani as a “communist,” with many GOP lawmakers having called for him to be deported. Mamdani won his stunning upset victory back in June running on a progressive policy agenda that included pledges to implement rent freezes and increase taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents.
Here are Trump’s remarks. The “President” would not have cats because they are independent and don’t defer to their staff (and Trump could never be “staff”). I’m guessing that if he has or had an animal, it’s probably a servile d*g:
From CNN, a response from Sliwa’s sister (Sliwa once had 17 cats!):
Sliwa did not respond to Trump on Friday. His sister, the media director of the campaign, instead sent a statement from his campaign manager that didn’t mention the president but went in depth about his long history of caring for pets and having a vision about animal welfare along with increasing affordability, being tough on crime and enhancing quality of life. In addition to being the Republican nominee, Sliwa is running this fall on a second, independent ballot line called “Protect Animals.”
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And this article from People shows the remarkable resilience of cats. Click to read about Xiao Mao, the cat who survived three weeks in a shipping container sent from China to Minnesota.
An excerpt:
A feline named Xiao Mao, who survived a harrowing weeks-long, trans-Pacific voyage from China to Minnesota in a shipping container, is now putting on weight, gaining trust, and inching closer to adoption.
After being rescued over the summer, Xiao Mao is reportedly on the road to recovery. Once deathly thin and highly distrustful after days in the shipping container without food or water, the cat has blossomed under the care of Pet Haven Inc. in Minneapolis, Minn.. According to a report from CBS News, the volunteer foster organization hopes to place her and a feline companion with whom Xiao Mao has bonded in a forever home in the next few months.
“It’s actually amazing she survived that journey, and we are not 100% sure how she did it,” Kerry D’Amato, executive director of Pet Haven, told the outlet. “Three weeks without food or water, she would not be alive. She must have been drinking condensation, maybe eating bugs and rodents there.”
The survival success of Xiao Mao, which means “little cat” in Mandarin Chinese, is partly credited to Pet Haven’s Wallflowers Program, which specializes in helping shy or traumatized animals, like Xiao Mao, learn to trust again.
The cat’s journey began in June when she accidentally hitched a ride inside a shipping container, traveling roughly 8,000 miles over three weeks from China to Minnesota. When the container arrived in Oakdale, Minn., Xiao Mao was found cowering under pallets — remarkably alive but emaciated and severely dehydrated.
After being trapped and secured by animal control, the feline was sent to Northwoods Humane Society in Wyoming, Minn. However, due to Xiao Mao’s fragile condition, the shelter wasn’t equipped for the intensive rehabilitation she required, so Pet Haven and its Wallflowers Program stepped in.
“When she arrived to us, she was deathly thin and very ill,” D’Amato recalled. “She would charge at us, hiss, and lunge. Today, she chirps at us and comes out when we call her. Her eyes are bright, her ears are forward, she is giving us all the indications she is trusting.”
In the early months of recovery, Xiao Mao was extremely skittish, hiding from any human contact. Through patient and steady trust-building, she began to relax and now seeks out attention from her caretakers.
. . . . A breakthrough came when she was paired with another cat named Prince, whose calm presence has helped her grow more confident.
Xiao Mao is pretty well recovered, and should be ready for adoption soon. Here’s a video showing the hapless moggy:
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I have heard good things about this PBS series documenting a mountain lion and her SIX cubs. There’s a video preview below the title, but if you click on the headline, you’ll get a description of the series (no telling how many episodes there will be, and perhaps they will be free (as each is released) on the website. The link below also takes you to to awesome videos, one of Willow taking down a huge elk—much bigger than she—right in front of their den. The other here, shows a warmer-weather hunt. Don’t miss the two videos. As PBS notes:
Mountain lions risk everything to hunt elk, prey more than twice their size. After ten years of monitoring mountain lions in Montana, this crew has captured this behavior on camera only four times.
From the PBS blurb:
A unique, decade-long mountain lion study uses a vast network of over 200 trail cameras scattered throughout Montana’s Sapphire Mountains to piece together the story of a female mountain lion named Willow and her kittens. The film weaves together footage of mountain lions and their complex interactions with each other. Witness an epic saga about life and death that contains never-before-captured events and behaviors at every turn.
And a preview from YouTube. Remember, the series starts on Wednesday.
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Lagniappe: Here’s a video of act who, six months ago, was cited by Guinness as having the world’s longest tail: 46.99 cm (18.5 inches). However, a new reddit post (it has two photos) says that a black cat named Xûr has the longest tail the poster ever saw. Unfortunately, no measurements were provided, but you can see Xûr’s story at Newsweek and I’ve put one photo from reddit below.
Lagniappe: From reddit user MeowntyPython, the six-month-old cat (no tail measurements provided). A measurement is in order in a few months!
Ecologist Susan Harrison has contributed some photos of bears, owls, and other critters in an “October Surprise” contribution. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.
Rounding a corner on a recent hike near Ashland, OR, I was startled to come face-to-face with a Black Bear (Ursus americanus). She glared and began walking toward me, while her half-grown cub rustled among the dry leaves downslope of the trail. Lowering my eyes, I backed away, and when she stopped advancing I managed a few photos. She eventually retreated to the trailside and watched me and a mountain biker pass by, evidently convinced of our harmlessness.
Black Bear:
This bear’s habitat and one of its chow sources, the berries of Madrone (Arbutus menziesii):
Until then, the most charismatic creature I saw recently was a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), hanging around a set of artificial owl burrows on some conserved grasslands near Davis, CA. These little owls typically usurp the homes of Ground Squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi). To boost owl numbers, people have taken to constructing owl burrows using cinderblocks, PVC pipe and other materials. Constructed burrows don’t always attract owls, and it was especially surprising to see this lone owl at the burrows in the non-nesting season. He or she alternated hiding in the tall grass and popping out to perch briefly on fences, all the while keeping an eye upward for hawks.
Burrowing Owl:
A lesser but still enjoyable surprise this fall was that our yard received two “first ever for the yard” visitors, a Cassin’s Vireo (Vireo cassinii) and a Lincoln’s Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii).
Cassin’s Vireo:
Lincoln’s Sparrow:
Very early one morning when my cats had persuaded me to let them outside, a slightly menacing surprise was a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) parked on top of the neighbor’s tree, singing away and presumably waiting for small to medium-sized mammals. We went indoors.
Great Horned Owl:
On a brief visit to friends in Bellingham, WA, black squirrels were an unexpected sight. These are melanistic Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) that were introduced to this area around 1900. Per Wikipedia, a single dominant mutation causes both their color and higher cold tolerance. I think they are rather beautiful.
Good morning on CaturSaturday, October 25, 2025, shabbos for Jewish cats and also National Greasy Foods Day. Time to get that burger, onion rings, and a shake, preferably a cake shake at Chicago’s Portillo (you may have seen this video before, but I won’t rest until I get one. If you’re visiting Chicago and want the full experience, go to Portillo’s for two dogs dragged through the garden, fries or onion rings, and a chocolate cake shake.
Here’s a Google Doodle, but I don’t understand the candy-cane striping. Click on the logo to see where it goes, and then tell me what it means (my best guess is that these are baseball seams):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The WaPo has two articles that seem to bode ill for the Republicans. The first says that premiums for Obamacare are set to go up by nearly a third, and this won’t go away if the government shutdown ends and Democrats get their way by extending healthcare subsidies set to expire. This appears to be straight inflation.
Premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will spike on average by 30 percent next year, according to final rates approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and shown in documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The rise in prices — affecting up to17 million Americans who buy coverageon the federal marketplace — are by far the largest annual premium increases in recent years. The higher premiums, along with the likely expiration of pandemic-era subsidies, mean millions of people will see their health insurance payments double or even triple in 2026.
The premium spikesarrive during a protracted and bitter congressional battle over health insurance costs that prompteda government shutdown since Oct. 1.Democrats have urged an extension of enhanced subsidies for plans sold through the Affordable Care Act to soften the blow of rising insurance costs, while Republicans have said the additional assistance was never meant to be permanent.
The spike in premiums will become visible to more Americans on Monday when the Trump administration is expected to open Healthcare.gov for window shopping to browse the price of plans ahead of the Nov. 1 start to open enrollment.A spokesman for CMS did not immediately return a request for comment.
New data released Friday showed inflation heated up in September to a pace not seen since January, according to the first dataset to be released during the government shutdown.
The September consumer price index showed prices rising at a 3 percent annual rate — up slightly from 2.9 percent in August and above April’s post-pandemic low of 2.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Gasoline prices, which edged down over the past year — providing some relief to consumers — nonetheless jumped 4.1 percent in September and were the largest factor in a 0.3 percent monthly increase.
But is this really a problem?. The annual rate of inflation is pretty low compared to earlier years, as this figure from the Post shows:
It’s churlish to wish for Americans to experience economic pain so that Democrats will be elected, but in 2028 Americans will be asking themselves, “Am I better off than I was four years ago?” If the answer is “no,” the Democrats will have a shot at the Presidency and perhaps Congress.
*One of my partners in crime, USC’s Anna Krylov, just published this piece at the Heterodox STEM site (click to read). You can read it at the site, but I’ve put the gist below. It’s a copy of a letter she sent to Nature when they asked her to review a manuscript. She refused for several reasons (one of which, the push for “citation justice,” we discussed here the other day.
Dear Dr. Kuttner
I am writing in response to your invitation to review the manuscript titled “Large circular dichroism in the total photoemission yield of free chiral nanoparticles created by a pure electric dipole effect” submitted for publication in Nature Communications.
Although the topic is within my field of expertise and I would normally welcome the opportunity to contribute to peer review, I must decline. Furthermore, I have decided not to engage with journals belonging to the Nature group in any professional capacity in the future because the group has adopted policies and practices that are incompatible with the mission of a scientific publisher.
Scientific publishers play a key role in the production of knowledge — they are a pillar of what Jonathan Rauch has termed the “the Constitution of Knowledge” (Rauch, 2025). The role of the publisher is to be an epistemic funnel: it accepts claims to truth at one end, but permits only those that withstand organized scrutiny to emerge from the other, a function traditionally performed by a rigorous peer-review and editorial process. This process should be guided by scientific rigor and a commitment to finding objective truth.
Unfortunately, the Nature group has abandoned its mission in favor of advancing a social justice agenda. The group has institutionalized censorship, implemented policies that have sacrificed merit in favor of identity-based criteria, and injected social engineering into its author guidelines and publishing process. The result is that papers published in Nature journals can no longer be regarded as rigorous science.
Three representative examples illustrate this decline:
1. Institutionalized social engineering
The Springer Nature Diversity Commitment (Skipper & Inchcoombe, 2019), which you quoted in your invitation letter, openly pledges to “take action to improve diversity and inclusion in the conferences we organise, and in our commissioned content, the peer review population and editorial boards.” Editors are “asked to intentionally and proactively reach out to women researchers” and authors are instructed to suggest reviewers “with diversity in mind.” In other words, editorial choices and peer review are to be guided not solely by competence but by demographic attributes. I cannot stop but wondering — was I asked to review the manuscript because of my expertise in the subject matter or because of my reproductive organs?
2. Ideological subversion of literature citations Nature Reviews Psychology (Unsigned, 2025) now encourages authors to practice “citation justice” — that is, to social-engineer their manuscript’s bibliography to promote members of favored identity groups, even if their works lack the requisite merit or relevance. “Citation justice” is particularly harmful because it undermines the rigor and reliability of published research. When references are chosen not for their scientific relevance or quality but to promote the work of preferred identity groups, the integrity of science itself is compromised (Shaw, 2025; Coyne, 2025).
3. Institutionalized censorship Nature Human Behavior has published a censorship manifesto (Unsigned, 2022) — now widely criticized (see, for example, Rauch, 2022; Winegard, 2022; Krylov & Tanzman, 2023) — in which they openly declare their intent to censor legitimate research findings that they deem potentially “harmful” to certain groups. Not only is it arrogant for editors to presume they have the expertise to make such judgments, the practice is antithetical to the production of knowledge.
There’s a bit more, but you can see it at the site. If every reviewer responded like this, the policies would change pronto, but scientists, like most academics, are too cowardly to fight back as well as far more engaged in their science and their careers than in purifying science from ideology. Pity. (I have responded to one or two publishers in this way.) Imagine how long these policies will continue to chill scientists—far longer than Trump will be doing damage to science. This ideological subversion of science publishing is going to be with us for the long run.
*The conservative City Journal has produced a new ranking of 100 highly-regarded American colleges that differs from other rankings because it incorporates information from several different places plus new information like ideological balance of students and faculty (h/t Luana). Their criteria:
We selected 100 schools that are highly touted by other ranking systems, widely known to the American public, and/or of high regional importance. We analyzed them by gathering data on 68 variables across 21 categories covering major aspects of on- and off-campus life.
Our rankings combine publicly available information from sources such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s College Free Speech Rankings. We also developed original measures exclusively for this project, such as the ideological balance of student political organizations and the partisan makeup of faculty campaign contributions.
Each variable in our rankings system is coded so that higher values mean better performance. We then convert every variable to a points scale using a simple min–max formula that quantifies how close the school is to the best possible value of the variable. Specifically, a raw value for a variable (X) is converted to points for our ranking (Y) by linearly scaling it between the minimum and maximum possible scores for that measure (e.g., the 1–5 range on a survey item, the 0-100 percent range of faculty jobs ads that do not require a diversity statement as part of the application):
Because not every dimension of campus life matters equally, we group related variables into categories and assign larger point caps (Y_max) to more important categories and smaller caps to less critical ones. For example, student ideological pluralism (as measured by self-reported student ideology and the left-right balance of student organizations) accounts for 5 percent of a school’s score while our estimate of how many years it will take the typical student to recoup their educational investment to attend a given college accounts for 12.5 percent.
A school’s overall score is the sum of points across our 21 categories, with the point caps for these categories collectively adding up to 100. Total scores near 100 indicate stronger overall performance and scores near 0 indicate weaker performance.
And, of course, here’s the top ten: (click to enlarge):
There is some (but not substantial) overlap with FIRE’s ranking of 257 colleges and universities for free speech. The University of Chicago made #3 on FIRE’s list, but only #32 on City Journal’s list, almost certainly because Chicago is not ideologically “balanced” (we’re nearly all liberals, with a some unhinged “progressives”). The University of Florida tops City Journal’s list, but is only #45 on FIRE’s. And you’ll want to know where Harvard is. Well, it’s #245 for FIRE, nearly dead last, but #37 on City Journal’s list, probably because free speech is more important to FIRE than to City Journal.
*As ever, I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press. This week it’s called TGIF: “My little Totenkopf.” (“Totenkopf“, or death head” refers to the death head that was the SS symbol and worn on their uniforms, but it can also be used as a pirate symbol.)
→ Too racist for the group chat: Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Office of Special Counsel, is under fire for being the most racist in a leaked group chat. In one message, Ingrassia said he has a “Nazi streak in me”; in another, Ingrassia wrote that “MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.” Right-wing group chats are cesspools. But this one went a little too far even for his interlocutors. One participant wrote back, “Jesus Christ.” To get that response you have to be so wildly out of line, so brazenly racist. The price of admission for a standard right-wing group chat these days is saying retarded 10 times, yelling at your mom that she’s “hit the wall,” giving two ironic sieg heils, and then posting your 23andMe results. Or at least that’s what I had to do.
This scandal coincided with Ingrassia’s other scandal of allegedly forcing a female subordinate to stay in his hotel room (according to Politico’s administration sources, he apparently arranged aheadof time to cancel her hotel room so that she would be stuck sleeping in his, a real class act, such an authentic office romance, like what you got before the feminists took over). She reportedly filed a complaint about the incident and then, fearing retaliation, withdrew it. Anyway, Ingrassia has finally withdrawn his name from consideration.
→ KKK laws are stymieing UCSD: A University of California, San Diego scholarship for black students was challenged under the Ku Klux Klan Act and must now be available to all students, regardless of race. Somehow our DEI went from color blindness to being so race-obsessed that it fell under KKK legislation. Basically, the college had tried to get around the race-based admissions ban by outsourcing the scholarship to a private foundation to run. Sure sounds like a conspiracy to continue racial discrimination, banned by an old anti-KKK measure from the 19th century. UCSD realized it had been caught, and they ended the scheme. To the UCSD admin: I don’t think this is what they mean by pack a few extra white sheets for college.
→ Wikipedia’s downfall: Wikipedia’s human traffic is down 8 percent in recent months. If you’re wondering why, it could be because of everything they get wrong—or it could be because ChatGPT has become the new Wikipedia, and also my best friend. To all the lazy kids writing research papers, I heavily recommend using AI instead—it might not be right all the time, but it’s a good relationship lesson: No partner is ever 100 percent correct (except for Bar, which I am legally obligated to say or a beefcake attacks me).
→ . . . . Over at Pomona College in Southern California, a campus Jewish group was hosting an October 7 survivor to speak about his experience in captivity and resilience and whatever else you can imagine someone might say to make sense of life after that happens. The talk was interrupted by masked protesters dressed in pseudo-Hamas garb (keffiyehs over their faces except for little eye slits), who attempted to storm the room. You see, the idea of a Jewish man escaping Hamas is infuriating (how dare he!). So kids in America put on the clothing of his attackers to scream at him. Across the world, pretty little blond boy Oxford students are now this week chanting: “Gaza, Gaza, make us proud, put the Zios in the ground.”
Oh, one more:
→ UK rape council falling apart: Over in England, the government has put together a national inquiry into the grooming gangs to address that whole situation, since suppression didn’t work. And of course it’s already corrupted. Two survivors quit the inquiry. In her resignation letter, Ellie-Ann Reynolds wrote that the committee “dictated what we could say publicly, edited our words, and made it clear that speaking openly would jeopardize our place on the panel,” and would often “downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse.” The UK is cooked, for real. They seem so uncomfortable with the fact of the rapes that the most polite thing to do is just ignore it. Ignoring uncomfortable things is ancient WASP wisdom, but it has led them into a very odd nook here, wouldn’t you say? Goodbye England, thanks for the laughs.
The Oxford student named in the Torygraph article was not only arrested, but suspended. While his call for killing Jews is odious, it would be legal free speech in America, as it didn’t pose the danger of imminent and predictable violence or destruction. And I agree with the American policy. Now if he had shouted that stuff in front of a crowd of Jews, things would be different. . .
*Here’s a case of censorship in two media: on stage and in a book. Young adult and children’s fiction are getting heavily woke-ified, so that the least controversial topic is taboo.
Author Jodi Picoult has the dubious honor of being banned in two mediums this fall — her books and now a musical based on her novel “Between the Lines.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the first author who has now had censorship occur in two different types of media,” Picoult says. “Honestly, I’m not out here to be salacious. I am writing the world as it is, and I am honestly just trying to write about difficult issues that people have a hard time talking about because that is what fiction and the arts do.”
The superintendent of Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana, canceled a production last week of “Between the Lines,” saying concerns were raised over “sexual innuendo” and alcohol references in the musical. Jeremy Fewell, the superintendent, did not respond to a request for comment.
“It’s devastating for us to know that these kids who put in hundreds of hours of hard work had that torn away from them because of the objections of a single parent,” says Picoult.
. . .Picoult noted that the same Indiana high school has previously produced “Grease,” where the sexual innuendo and alcohol abuse is much greater, including a pregnancy scare, sex-mad teens and the line “Did she put up a fight?”
“Between the Lines” centers on Delilah, an outsider in a new high school, who finds solace in a book and realizes she has the power to write her own story and narrate her own life. “It is a very benign message. And it’s actually a really important one for adolescents today,” says Picoult.
The original work, which features a nonbinary character, had already been edited with licensed changes to make it more palatable for a conservative audience, including removing any reference to the nonbinary character’s gender orientation.
Picoult’s books have been widely banned, especially in Florida, and the article documents plays by several people being canceled throughout the U.S. She has a good quote here: “What I know, perhaps better than most people, as someone whose books have been banned, is when one parent starts deciding what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for the children of other parents, we have a big problem.”
Two from Dr. Cobb. I was like the first guy, and though my infection with a botfly in the head was inadvertent, I decided to leave it in as an experiment:
At Kibale National Park, wildlife epidemiologist Tony Goldberg regularly becomes lunch for various parasites—some of which he turns into science experiments.Learn more: https://scim.ag/4nhTQJa
Many people, including Paul McCartney, have said that the 1966 Beach Boys song “God Only Knows,” a product of Brian Wilson—with a bit of contribution from Tony Asher—is their favorite rock/pop song.
To wit:
Now I won’t beef about the grammatical error in the title (it should be “Only God Knows,” but that would mess up the rhythm), but I do agree that it’s in the top ten of rock songs. (For me, the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” would probably be #1). The words may be a bit puerile—just another testimony to undying love—but that’s not why the song is famous. It’s the tune and, above all, the vocal embellishments and the complex melody, that makes this song so great. If you don’t mind a bit of arcane music analysis, here’s Rick Beato in a recent video calling “God Only Knows” the “perfect song.” And even if you’re not into Beato’s analysis of melody, you can’t help but see from his analysis how unusual and inventive Wilson’s melody was. Wilson spent days perfecting the song and its recording.
You can see how energized Beato is when he listens to the song and discusses its chords and notes.
Below is the final product as released on the immortal album Pet Sounds (have a look at its lineup of songs at the previous link). There’s a great live performance, with Carl Wilson singing lead (as he did on the record), here. But first, a few words from the Wikipedia entry:
Written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, it is a baroque-style love song distinguished for its harmonic innovation and complexity, unusual instrumentation, and subversion of typical popular music conventions, both lyrically and musically. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs of all time and as the Beach Boys’ finest record.
The song’s musical sophistication is demonstrated by its three contrapuntal vocal parts and weak tonal center (competing between the keys of E and A). Lyrically, the words are expressed from the perspective of a narrator who asserts that life without their lover could only be fathomed by God—an entity that had been considered taboo to name in the title or lyric of a pop song. It marked a departure for Wilson, who attributed the impetus for the song to Asher’s affinity for standards such as “Stella by Starlight“. Some commentators interpret “God Only Knows” as promoting suicidal ideations, although such an interpretation was not intended by the songwriters. Others have compared the song’s advanced harmonic structure to the work of classical composers such as Delibes, Bach, and Stravinsky.
Wilson produced the record between March and April 1966, enlisting about 20 session musicians who variously played drums, sleigh bells, plastic orange juice cups, clarinets, flutes, strings, French horn, accordion, guitars, upright bass, harpsichord, and a tack piano with its strings taped. His brother Carl Wilson sang lead, a vocal performance that became regarded as Carl’s best ever, with Brian himself and Bruce Johnston providing additional harmonies. The song ends with a series of repeating vocal rounds, another device that was uncommon for popular music of the era.
The released version (official video), three minutes of musical genius. The video apparently shows two high-school lovers with one about to go off to college.
I’ve previously posted the video below, but wanted to show it again it again because it documents another connection between the Beatles and “God Only Knows”: George Martin (“The Fifth Beatle”) goes to visit Brian Wilson at his home, and they discuss the song at length, later repairing to the studio where Martin fiddles with the original tapes. It’s five minutes well spent.
Finally, two videos documenting the production of this song in the studio. Both show Wilson’s perfectionism.
Now if you have a different “perfect song” (and “perfect” is subject to different interpretations), please name it below. In lieu of that, give us your favorite song, which may or may not be ‘perfect.” Picking one off the top of my head, I’d say the Beatles’ “In My Life” comes close to perfection (original here). The lovely baroque bridge was written and performed by George Martin.
Thanks to several readers for sending in “emergency photos”. We can keep going for several days now.
Today’s bird photos come from a Kiwi, David Riddell. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
New Zealand is known as a land of birds, but that’s mainly because we have hardly any land mammals. There are relatively few bird species here, but one group that is really well represented is the oceanic birds. In particular, 17 albatross species have been recorded in the New Zealand region, of which 12 breed here, and seven are endemic (i.e., they breed only here, though they may range widely through the southern oceans). Here are some of the birds I’ve encountered over the past several years; many of them are seriously threatened, largely as a result of encounters with trawlers and longliners, though efforts are being made to remedy this.
Gibson’s albatross (Diomedea antipodensis gibsoni) has slightly complicated taxonomy. It’s a subspecies of the Antipodean albatross, which was split from the snowy (wandering) albatross (D. exulans) in 1992. They breed only on the Auckland Islands, far to the south of the New Zealand mainland (nowhere near Auckland city!) but are commonly seen around the mainland, especially in winter:
Another shot of Gibson’s albatross, flying:
Many of the smaller albatrosses belong to the genus Thalassarche, and are known in New Zealand as mollymawks, the name deriving from an old Dutch word meaning foolish gull. They are characterised by being entirely black across the upper wings and back. This is a Campbell mollymawk (T. impavida), which breeds only on the Campbell Islands. They are very similar to the black-browed mollymawk, but have a bright yellow (rather than dark) eye, and are darker under the wing. Black-brows also breed on Campbell Island, and hybrids occur, but are rare:
The one in the front is a Buller’s mollymawk (T. bulleri), which breed widely in the New Zealand region, though nowhere else. At the back is a white-capped mollymawk (T. cauta steadi), most of which breed on the Auckland Islands. The nominate subspecies breeds on islands off Tasmania:
Salvin’s mollymawk (T. salvini) is a close relative of the white-capped, but is darker on the head and neck, with a dark spot on the bill tip. Breed on the Bounty and Snares Islands.
Here’s another Buller’s mollymawk, very happy to be fed some fresh blue cod in the Chatham Islands!
One of the highlights of a trip to the Chatham Islands last year was a visit to the Pyramid, a conical rock stack 1.7 ha in area, rising to 174 metres above sea level, the only breeding ground of the Chatham mollymawk (T. eremita). Most had left by the time we arrived in March, but there were still a few around:
JAC: Here’s a photo from Wikipedia; the Pyramid is the small island in the distance to the left:
Most Antipodean albatrosses (D. a. antipodensis) breed on the Antipodes Islands, but in recent years one pair has bred on Pitt Island, in the Chathams, which is where we saw this one. They’re smaller and on average darker than Gibson’s albatrosses, though not all are as dark as this one. Pitt Island is the remotest inhabited island in New Zealand (population: 38), but it does have a really nice lodge you can stay at:
While at the Chathams we were very happy to come across a flock of subantarctic shearwaters (Puffinus elegans) near their main breeding ground in the group at the Star Keys. Maybe not the greatest photo, but they’re very rarely photographed at sea, and somehow I managed to snap this while bouncing along at speed in the lodge owner’s jet boat:
Giant petrels are big, ugly predators/scavengers that hang around colonies of seabirds and marine mammals. This is the Northern Giant Petrel (Macronectes halli). Mature southern giants tend to have more white on them but the only sure way to tell them apart is by the colour of the bill tip – brownish on northern, greenish on southern. Having looked at hundreds of bill tips I’ve yet to find a green one!:
On a trip off the North Island west coast one winter’s day in 2018 I was hoping to see a few prion species – the prions are small, bluish petrels and I’ve often found several species storm-wrecked on beaches, but the only one I’d ever seen alive at sea was fairy prion (Pachyptila turtur). With a cold drizzle blowing horizontally it looked like once again we would see nothing but this species, though there were hundreds of them…
Then just as the boat skipper was making noises about heading home, suddenly there were two slender-billed prions (Pachyptila belcheri) right by the boat! They’re quite widespread globally (though not a New Zealand breeding species) but they’re very hard to positively identify at sea and again are rarely photographed, so it made all the hard work and discomfort of the day worthwhile:
The white-faced storm petrel (Pelagodroma marina) looks tiny on the open ocean but is common off the north-eastern North Island coast. Until 2003 it was thought to be the only storm petrel breeding in the area:
Then in January of that year a New Zealand storm petrel (Fregetta maoriana) was sighted off the Mercury Islands – the first record of the species, which had been presumed extinct, since the 19th century. Several more were seen in November near Little Barrier Island which confirmed the identification, incredible though it seemed, and my wife, daughter and I were able to get on a boat heading out to try and find more, on the second day of 2004. We saw three. My camera that day was rubbish, and I still don’t have any satisfactory photos but at least this shot (taken a few years later) has some drama to it. The breeding ground turned out to be Little Barrier, which was cleared of cats (sorry Jerry!) in 1980, and Pacific rats in 2004. The storm petrel population has since boomed, and they are now quite common off the north-eastern coast:
As well as albatrosses, New Zealand is a global centre of penguin diversity. Six species breed here (four of them endemic), and eight others are vagrants. I don’t have any decent pictures of the native ones, but this young Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) created a national stir when it turned up on a beach near the capital, Wellington – the local media dubbed it Happy Feet! We happened to be passing (while on the way to see another bird) so stopped to see it before it was retrieved by the Dept of Conservation, nursed back to health and released in the open ocean. It had a radio tag attached, which stopped working after a couple of days; some think the bird was snaffled by a passing orca, but I prefer to think the tag dropped off:
