A common murre or common guillemot (Uria aalge) in Monterey Bay, California, USA
by doug0013

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A common murre or common guillemot (Uria aalge) in Monterey Bay, California, USA
by doug0013
I drew as much as my OCs and AU designs as possible (not including modleyverse)
common guillemot (uria aalge), ireland
Name: Q'iare Age: 1,450 Gender: Female Pronouns: She/Her Species: Sun elf Place of Origin: Aertuith, Faranhil
The daughter of Solaris's high priest, and a distant relative of Prince Léiothin. As sweet and considerate as her younger cousin, Q'iare sought to help him in his goal of bringing peace between the elven kingdoms, although she took a different method. A skilled singer and harpist, she began seeking fellow musicians across Arcadia to unite people through what she knew best: music. Overly optimistic and full of ideas, Q'iare can sometimes get ahead of herself, needing her friends to balance her and help her ideas come to fruition successfully. She is the primary vocalist of their group, the Four Seasons, occasionally playing the flute on songs where Noster takes vocals. Name: Onarus Age: 179 Gender: Female Pronouns: She/Her Species: Centaur Place of Origin: Tiloba Valley, Arcadia A centaur with little affinity for mining or smithing, Onarus instead turned her attention to composing music for funerals, unions, and other ceremonial occasions. Having crossed paths with elven musician Q'iare at Dewbright Hollow, the two eagerly began comparing their musical sensibilities and sought to find more musicians to collaborate with. Easygoing and level-headed, Onarus acts as the backbone of the Four Seasons both musically and socially. To expand her repertoire as the group's percussionist she collaborated with an irissid farrier to create a set of custom "shoes" made of wood and many different metals, giving her rhythmic hoofbeats a unique sound, accompanied by hand-bells and (very rarely, due to its awkwardness to transport) a hammer and anvil. As well as percussion she provides backing vocals, but occasionally takes lead on some of her compositions. Name: Noster Age: 44 Gender: Male Pronouns: He/Him Species: Irissid Place of Origin: Triton, Rhyneris Noster hails from a family of fishers in the lake-town of Triton. A talented dancer and multi-instrumentalist, skilled in the flute, goathorn, and double-pipes, he had little interest in the family business. After a string of unsuccessful relationships Noster grew restless in his town, seeking to travel and share his music with others. Meeting Q'iare and Onarus at Wayfarer's Gate, he eagerly joined them and began helping contribute to their music. Although he typically doesn't sing, owing to his speciality in traditional irissid wind intruments, he's considered eye-catching due to his inability to remain still whilst playing, often dancing as he does. Although painfully aware of the drastic difference in lifespan, he can't help but hope for a life spent with Q'iare. Name: Uria Age: 1,002 Gender: Male Pronouns: He/Him Species: Moon elf Place of Origin: Aeltuith, Haradhel
A rare exception to the social living of elves, Uria lived an asocial life as a hunter in the forests of Haradhel. Despite his quiet, reserved nature, he was well-known and respected by his people due to his exceptional skills, able to take down game like giant boars single-handedly. As well as his hunting prowess, he was also an exceptional musician, mastering the lute at a young age. How exactly he was found by Q'iare is unclear, but he gladly accepted the offer, finally leaving the forest. Although his main role is the lute, he occasionally provides backup vocals and, even rarer, sings lead (although only jointly with Q'iare, who he has formed a surprisingly strong bond with despite their peoples' rivalry).
Originally drawn: 11 Sept 2024
halfway through drawing this i realized ARGStars are athletes not idols so my joke is ruined
Common Murre
Study suggests cause of Pacific Ocean seabird deaths in 2015 - Los Angeles Times
Common murres are the masters of their universe. One of the best adapted seabirds in the northern hemisphere, they can outfly other seabirds and speed from shelf to coast in a few hours. Underwater, they’re agile enough to catch fast-moving prey and strong enough to dive the depths of two football fields. If the fish move, they can move, too.
Yet half a million to 1.2 million common murres starved to death during the 2014 to 2016 marine heatwave — about 10% to 20% of the population, said John Piatt, wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage and the corresponding author on the study. On a stretch of beach more than a half-mile long in Prince William Sound of Alaska, their carcasses numbered in the thousands.
Melanie Smith, a director based in Alaska for the National Audubon Society’s Migratory Bird Initiative, who was not affiliated with the study, recalls seeing murres as far inland as Fairbanks.
“The murres were so desperate for food, they were going to places they never go and had never been seen before,” Smith said. “They’re squarely an ocean species and don’t belong in freshwater environments at all. It was a clear sign something was wrong.”
Reproductive rates in murre colonies from California to the Bering Sea also plummeted alarmingly. Colonies that had been stable for decades stopped laying eggs. From 2015 to 2017, 22 murre colonies from California to the Bering Sea didn’t produce a single chick. In all his years studying the birds, Piatt said he could count on one hand the number of colonies that had failed before 2015.
“These birds are so productive and efficient,” Piatt said. “This just doesn’t happen.”
Altogether, the die-offs spanned three marine ecosystems over 3,700 miles of coast and lasted up to nine months in the Gulf of Alaska, where the murres were hardest hit.
“Did that get my attention? Yeah, you bet,” said Piatt, who has been studying murres since the 1970s. “This level of mortality and over this range is just mind blowing.”
Piatt suspected there was more to their plight than the redistribution of poorer quality prey, given the murres’ superlative ability of finding food across the lengths and depths of the continental shelf.
Piatt and his colleagues looked again at the food supply, but through a different lens. Researchers studying models of predator fish — including Pacific cod, arrowtooth flounder and walleye pollock that compete with the common murre for food — projected that a 36-degree (Fahrenheit) increase in water temperatures would have jacked up fish appetites by 34% to 70%.
Give that predator fish already out-consume seabirds 10- to 100-fold under normal conditions, they would have completely decimated the food supply during the Blob. Sure enough, while dead murres were washing ashore in droves, adult Pacific cod populations in the Gulf of Alaska were “silently crashing” below the surface, Piatt said.
So the murres were hit with a double whammy, which exploited one of their few vulnerabilities — their high metabolism. The small seabird, which weighs about 2 pounds, must eat 56% of its body mass each day to survive — a daily diet of about 60 to 120 high-fat forage fish, including sardines, herring and capelin. Without food, murres starve to death within three to five days. Many of the dead or dying murres that washed ashore had empty stomachs and little to no body fat or muscle.
10 Fav Fandoms (chapter 1)
Name your top 10 fav character from 10 different fandoms.
Thanks for the tag, @subdee and @hxhhasmysoul !
Well, since i was tagged twice, i can write about 20 i guess?
But to choose a favourite character is extremely difficult for me - most likely i love several characters equally...
Ofc my obsession with Gon is obvious but mostly because i can see a lot of myself in this character, especially when i remember my awful acts i still regret about.
So i write about my favourite characters dynamics instead!
And since for now I'm obsessed with HxH fandom (funny thing one of the russian translated versions is XxX), i will reffer to it a lot!
So here the ch 1:
1) Gon Freecss - Killua Zoldyck (Hunter X Hunter) dynamic
Well, that's obvious, i don't need to explain.
2) The Twenty Fifth Bam - Khun Aguero Agniss - Rak Wraithraiser (Tower of God) dynamic
That's obvious for those who read TOG or started watch new anime... I'm sure a lot of people whould agree with me, how similar Khun's and Killua's characters are, especially how Khun cares about Bam. Another thing, that without Rak, Khun&Bam's relationship kinda reminds me of that of Killua&Gon's in a bad way (Did you watch YouTube video "Every time Killua says Gon's name"? Well, all this video is just a single arc (The Hell Train arc) of ToG. And perhaps, during this arc, Khun was screaming or saying worryingly Bam's name even more than Killua during the whole HxH anime).
Yet when Rak is with them, things are different. So i suppose, if Gon and Killua had a third friend like Rak, a lot of terrible things between them could be awoided or would happen in a more healthy way.
3) Luffy - Law (One Piece) dynamic
I see (ofc i can easily imagine things) a lot of Law&Ace parallels at Luffy's side, and Luffy&Corason&Lamie parallels at Law's side. So i really hope they'll share sake and become brothers one day.
4) Lessa - Dark Lessa (Lessa) dynamic
She's an absolute invincible darkness, he's a vessel created to hold her from destroing the world.
6) Natalie - Thumbless (Uria) dynamic
Both of them have a really dark past yet both of them try to help to each other as much as they can.
5) Raven - Starfire (Teen Titans) dynamic
I really love all the Titans and their dynamics equally (they like a small version of Straw Hats crew), but these two's dynamic is the most contrasty for me.
8) Bucky - the whole world (Don't hate) dynamic
Being the only one human in the world of animals isn't an easy thing.
(If you like Killugon, you will really like Bob there)
7) Grim Reaper & Ghosts (Ghost Teller) dynamic
I don't know how to explain it, you should just read it.
9) Virt - the Beast (Over the Garden Wall) dynamic
A lot of dynamics are cool in the OtGW but this one is the brightest. He was facing his fears and found solution.
10) Edward Elric - The Truth (Fullmetal Alchemist) dynamic
This dynamic is the most deep in FMA. It gave birth to all of brothers' problems and during the whole manga Edward was fighting the Truth while the Truth was just interested in his ignorance and stubborness. At the end Edward found the solution in regecting the Truth.