I care for things with fins and feathers.

Aquarist::: Previously aquaticstuff, avianadventures

[snototter]

A jaguar (Panthera onca) and her melanistic cub in ARTIS Zoo, The Netherlands

by safi kok

[jetix]

Japanese Mole, 2021-07-11

[english-history-trip]

Drought reveals hidden formal gardens at Chatsworth House

Known as ‘The Great Parterre’, the elaborate ornamental garden was created around 1699 for the 1st Duke of Devonshire to complement the newly completed South Front of Chatsworth House. Measuring approximately 473 feet by 227 feet, the formal arrangement of flower beds, gravel paths and intricate swirling patterns reflected the grand garden style that dominated late 17th-century Europe. The historic layout was removed around 1730 during a redesign commissioned by the 3rd Duke of Devonshire, when the parterre was covered over and replaced with a new landscape design. This summer’s exceptionally hot and dry conditions have temporarily brought the lost garden back into view. The contrast has appeared because the grass covering the former flower beds and pathways has shallower root systems than the surrounding areas, causing it to dry out and brown more rapidly during periods of intense heat and drought. The resulting crop marks have revealed the intricate geometry of the original garden beneath the lawn.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2026/07/drought-reveals-hidden-formal-gardens-at-chatsworth-hous/158637

[bovineblogger]

Saw a brown-headed cowbird yesterday on a drive and while talking to my husband about it I immediately said "NOT even a cow"

the not-cow in question

NOT EVEN a . thats NOT one.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[birds-in-posts]

Goldcrest (Regulus regulus)

[shadeslayer]

its so fucked that not only did they erase our languages and beat and kill our people for using them but they stole the words of important tribes and important people and used them for the military and for trees and for food and for summer camps. average native american name is seen by non ntvs as a joke or something to use or consume, not a human being

[shadeslayer]

i like that ppl r thinking abt town names and things thats very good to be aware of but just to be clear this is actually specifically about other things actually, the things everyone but those looking up their nation forget about

sequoyah was the man who created the tsalagi syllabary before it was ever a tree

if i try to look for apparel or crafts to show off my chickasaw pride, i get results for chickasaw plums which is just a specific species of plum before i get results about human beings

others have mentioned if they google their nations name they get boot companies before their nations website!

theres a tweet that still haunts me that was about a Quirky Quasi American Restaurant in europe or somewhere that was being funny by being cowboy themed and their steaks were named after native american nations. even outside the usa we are nothing but literal dead meat for others consumption

"blackhawk" "apache" - fuck theres a whole wikipedia page for the way weve had our names used for weapons used to colonize and kill us and others!

yes talk about town and location names but you need to look farther than that. it gets so much worse, i promise

[aquariumpacific]

Nothing to odysSEA here..

just a totally normal Trojan Seahorse 👀

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

My garden, with the innumerable herbs and alliums I let flower instead of pulling out, has suddenly acquired a myriad of wasps. They’re mostly solitary species and fairly chill so of course I had to stick a camera in their faces.

So far I’m really happy with these!

These will eventually make their way to the @animalphotorefs repository, once I sort the uh…. Six thousand and seven hundred something bug photos I just took.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Oh man I am so pleased with today’s attempt.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

#jfc 4000 iso...#<- im a beginner. i've never seen iso that high#or shutter speed that fast prev tags from @time-teller

What you'll find - for prev but also anyone interested - is that the faster the moving animal you're trying to photograph the higher the shutter speed gets. I normally shoot birds at 2000-3000 frames per second in order to get sharp feathers in flight, and after a bunch of trial and error anything under about 8000 was just not enough for these little wasps while in flight if I wanted to see detail. They're so fast that even getting these shots required setting my focus distance when they were sitting on the flower, shooting burst, and hoping they took off during the burst.

The reason the ISO is so high is because that lets me use a higher aperture (how wide open the lens is). The narrower the aperture - the higher the F number on the screen - the less light gets in, but the deeper the depth of field is. If you have a shallow depth of field, you get photos like a lot of my early macro attempts... where the nose of an animal facing the camera is in focus but the eyes and ears are not! When you're shooting with a high ISO your images can get really noisy, especially in low light, but I was working in really strong direct sunlight so I had room to mess around with settings. (You can push this too far. I accidentally took a bunch of baby elephant pool wrestling photos on 12000 ISO because I was exhausted and forgot to reset after messing with settings in a really dark reptile house. There's a reason those aren't online.)

I also just want to point out that I am also fairly new at photography overall - I've only really been doing animal photography seriously for the last three years - and that a lot of what will help you get better is trial and error. I have two photography mentors who are both super technical guys and they repeatedly tried to explain the exposure triangle theory to me (the relationship between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed). It never stuck. Y'know what did? Taking a truly astounding number of photos and just messing around with my settings until it started making sense. I shoot with all my settings on manual now, but I absolutely did not start there.

So even as a beginner you too can learn to use ridiculous settings! Find a thing you want to photograph, put the settings where you think they need to be to get what you want. Get enough photos to make you happy, and then change one setting a little bit and try again. I suggest using auto settings where you only have to pick a value for one setting manually and then the camera automatically adjusts the other two for the best photo. Play with a couple adjustments to the same setting on the same subject so you can compare the photos. Over time, it really will start to make sense and come more naturally. And then you can join me in the "your shutter speed was what?" club!

[hawkpartys]

If you want to take higher aperture macro photos without hitting ISO numbers like that, I cannot recommend enough using a flash unit. Even(and honestly especially!) in sunlight. The flash even gives you room to knock the shutterspeed down-- I've gotten beautiful "freeze-frame" shots working at 250.

(ISO 100, F11, 1/250)

(ISO 100, F11, 1/250) (dont be fooled, this guy was not actually sitting still)

(okay this ones mainly just here because its funny) (ISO 200, F13(ish, manual aperture ring so some fudgy inbetween value), 1/250)

I only say this because high ISO plus a high aperture is a surefire recipe for fuzzed out photos-- As you raise your aperture value, once you hit the diffraction point, your resolution begins to go down, which when combined with the noise can be a huge pain.

(Though that also depends on your lens. I could get up to F32 on my nikkor without the resolution getting too bad, but F16 and above on my laowa are a pain. Such is life)

The increased clarity of lower ISO can be worth it in my opinion cause you can get stuff like this

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

See, this is a person who knows more than I do about macro photography!

I had not thought about trying flash - you can’t use them at zoos so it hadn’t crossed my mind for wildlife.

They are really right about the combination of high aperture and ISO making things grainy. I was able to push to F10 there because of the lens I was using, but I couldn’t go much further and smaller glass wouldn’t work at those settings at all.

Lovely photos and thank you for chiming in!

[orcinus-veterinarius]

When I was 15-16, I talked my family out of visiting zoos (something we’d always loved) and even told people I no longer wanted to be a vet (my dream since 8) because I “loved animals too much.” Basically, I was a genuinely animal-loving kid with a computer who trusted the first thing I saw on Google, which was usually PETA.

All this to say… you can change your mind. You don’t have to cling to something when you have learned the information you were given was incorrect. You can grow.

[porcelain-dollbones]

snakes really make you appreciate how gross mammals really are. squamates are very dry and clean

[porcelain-dollbones]

a bird is a kind of reptile that has learned to be yucky.

[c-53]

I have a bisexual guppy and its funny as hell to watch because it seems like he’s only bi out of desperation. Like all of the female guppies are unimpressed by him, and dont accept his mating displays, and every time he fails, he goes over to a SPECIFIC male guppy (the prettiest male guppy in the tank) like PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE and that male guppy always lets him????

[domnika-deactivated20250923]

i would read that fanfic ngl

[c-53]

About my fish??

[graceful-not]

HELP?????

[everyfandom-girl]

YEAH THIS IS SCIENTIFICALLY RECORDED

WOMEN LOVE GAYBOY

[tea-and-hockey]

FUJOSHI FISH????

[sparrrorow-art]

the shimp got too much attention and now there are transphobes in my notes, this is a transgender blog run by a transgender dyke. fuckers.

[fleshengine]

Reblog this loby when they least expect it.

[great-and-small]

Yeah okay there are like 11 species of heron native to the USA and yes fine I’ve only managed to spot 10 of those species. You might think I’m bitter about that one species evading me but I’m not. I’m actually the Least Bittern person about it in the entire world

[wholesome-animal-images]

[pengosolvent]

Edit: the title for this comic is “Puzzle Rat” this one’s a few days late due to having a lot of doctors appointments sorry it’s  just 9 pages, and about some rats… it’s more symbolic than anything really

(it’s completely unrelated to any of my songs that have to do with “puzzleboy”) Patreon: www.patreon.com/PengoSolvent

[makingtrouble]

It's my cat's birthday (anniversary of me getting him) so I told him the story of his life while petting him real good

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

[makingtrouble]

Actually I've decided this is a poem

[mysillycomics]

how to have a sturgeon summer:

1. be quite large

2. use your barbels to find prey among the gravel along the bottom of the river

3. extend your siphon-like mouth to eat small fish, shellfish, and crustaceans

4. launch yourself out of the water and make a big splash just for fun

5. show off them scutes!

you can now enjoy your sturgeon summer