I love them so much

I was looking through our online album trying to find recent pictures I haven't posted here, and came across this. cottonmanifesto already posted it in her journal (she took the picture), but I had to run it here. I love Charlie's (he's the black one, if you don't know) expression, like he's in on some joke. And Maggie, of course, looks like a total maniac.

I have some bias here, but I think dogs are the best choice if you have to have animals living in the house with you. Not that they do anything for us--they aren't working dogs (the "work" they were bred for is illegal and self-destructive)--but they serve as sponges for affection. Or they're like capacitors: they absorb affection, and hold onto it for as long as you are gone, and then return it whenever you need it. They are rechargeable affection batteries--they give and receive feelings of warmth and affection and love constantly.

They require work and resources to function properly, and since they are living things we have a responsibility to their well-being, but at some point, we decided that all that work was worth it.

Stacka Fixies

Harvard Square.

If I was still an artist

I'd take pictures like this. (She's not dead, she's half-asleep.)

Promise of Spring?

Organic hothouse lettuce.

( one more )

Indoor wildlife

Hey, badnoodles, can you see the wing venation?

I was so excited to find this fly. This 365 project is changing how I look at the world. I'm desperate to find animals inside buildings. Even (especially?) if they are bugs. I suspect this is a lesser housefly. Hopefully the picture has enough information in it to make an identification.

Discussion questions for extra credit.

What would we do without the Internet?
Has Pop Culture been perfected, or is it hopelessly lost?
Hey, didn't my dad and I visit that glacial lake in Alaska?

Required viewing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2CfuqcUGE

My negative feelings about LiveJournal and blogging in general have been swept away.

365 Urban Species. #051: American Goldfinch

photo by cottonmanifesto

Urban species #051: American goldfinch Carduelis tristis

During the spring and summer, the male American goldfinch is bright lemon yellow, with a black cap on the front of its head. The rest of the year, the male and female look similar: dull olive with black wings marked with white wing bars.

The goldfinch lives almost entirely on seeds. Seeds of plants that gardeners consider weeds provide most of its diet. The large plant family Asteraceae contains many important weeds that goldfinches and other birds feed on, including common urban plants such as dandelion and thistle. Because these seeds are most abundant in the late summer and fall, the goldfinch has adapted to have the latest breeding season of our songbirds. As for winter food, Cities landscaped with the right plants can provide it for them: birch and alder seeds do the trick. Of course, humans feed goldfinches as well, buying feeders specially designed for them. These are filled with the sterilized seed from a Ethiopian plant (in the Asteraceae family) called niger, but often sold as "thistle." American goldfinches are the among the five most common birds reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society's eBird program.

The American goldfinch is the state bird of the most densely populated state, New Jersey, and also Iowa and Washington. There are at least five other species of Cardeulis finches in North America, including the lesser goldfinch (C. psaltria) of the southwest, and the common redpoll.


Photo by urbpan. Male American goldfinch in breeding plumage (this entry edited to add it), in May.