#fauna

[blondebrainpowered]

Mouse Armor by Jeff de Boer

Etsy Mouse armor necklace and earrings available as well as other work by Jeff de Boor.

[artefarte]

A perfectly natural heterosexual black swan couple raising their cute fluffy babies together as God intended <3

SIKE

THEY'RE GAY

And they're not some rare exception to the rule, either!!!

About 25% of black swan couples consist of two swans of the same sex (typically, two males).

These couples will court each other, build a nest, and raise their young together in a more-or-less committed monogamous relationship.

In fact, these same-sex couples have a high success rate of 80% when raising their young to adulthood, as opposed to the 30% of their heterosexual counterparts! Two big buff papa swans are better than one when it comes to stomping on invaders of nesting territory.

"But," I hear you say, "where do their baby floofballs come from? Does mpreg exist among black swans?"

Alas, no, but there is a very elegant solution to this. The swan couple may simply temporarily associate themselves with a female swan.

Afterwards, the female swan deposits their eggs and swims off free to live her single girlie life if she wishes (or, find a boyfriend. Preferably one who isn't already committed to another boyfriend.)

So whenever someone commits the naturalistic fallacy "homosexuality bad because unnatural >:(" I like to point out not only their glaring illogicality, but also, respectfully, there is homosexuality happening in the local lake right now.

This concludes my Ted Talk on gay swans.

[sea-spines]

wasting disease available as a print || ko-fi

[reblogifyoucanseesexy]

[niurd]

instagram.com/p/DTl7J9WksZW/

[great-and-small]

I was asked to officiate the wedding of my very dear friends and while that was like the highest honor imaginable a close second was being asked to host an informative nature walk for all of the out of town guests the morning before the ceremony to give them a taste of the local ecology.

Not to brag but I picked the best spot and we got to hear an absolute orchestra of alligator bellowing in addition to witnessing this big guy

Highlight of the morning was probably our Sandhill crane courtship dance impersonation contest, which was fiercely competitive and even drew a small crowd of unrelated spectators. Our winner absolutely became a Sandhill crane for 30 seconds and his vigorous leaping and flapping won him a brand new pair of binoculars as a trophy.

I also made these custom stickers to hand out as prizes for trivia questions and spotting challenges during the walk, and everyone wore them around the reception with great pride.

I love sharing the ecology of my home with others and this was such a fun way to do it! I had a very joyful weekend and I may have even converted a few new birders 😏

[horrorcitos]

Light, shadow, and reflection in the heat wave