i actually love seeing vids from like british zoos that have coyotes cause i'm like hey little buddy, i saw you outside my house last night what are you doing in the place for fancy animals. and then i remember that coyotes and bobcats and raccoons and mountain lions are americas-exclusives
Fancy Animals
[North America has many fine Beasts!]
Eider ducks sound as though you’ve just told them a very interesting fact or juicy gossip.
reblog for noises
Dovekie aka Little Auk (Alle alle), family Alcidae, order Charadriiformes, Iceland
Photograph by Christophe Moning
I am so pleased to report that in addition to being absolutely shaped, these guys are also very, very sized.
But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?
Let me tell you a thing.
This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then.
This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together.
AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing.
You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already.
Here’s her list of kitchen basics.
Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic.
Make your own pasta–gluten free.
She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.
A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger.
Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section.
She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days.
Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling.
Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.
I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that.
If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this.
Reblogging for all the impoverished students. Jack is the breadline queen. And if you don’t need this - donate to your nearest food bank, stat.
Reblogging for students, working folks, and everyone who’s ever had to choose between essentials at the store because you can only afford milk OR bread, not both.
Her blog is called Cooking on a bootstrap now
Here’s an up to date link
reblogging and adding another very useful website of cheap recipes: budgetbytes.com
Linked websites are down (at least for me, at this particular moment). Try this link:
"Fears that Nebraska’s annual spring migration of sandhill cranes could be the avian equivalent of a “superspreader” event have been completely abated, as a record-setting stopover in Nebraska of thousands of birds was enjoyed without any sign of a bird flu outbreak.
Three-quarters of a million cranes migrating north to their spring habitat landed in the Platte River in Nebraska. The number is deemed an underestimation, but you try counting more than 700,000 birds.
Fears that the highly contagious new strain of bird flu H5N1 could carry over to the cranes from livestock have been assuaged as the birds are beginning to move off again without a single dead crane being observed, local news reports.
Aside from the mini celebration of bird flu’s absence, the real celebration—that this year was the largest on-record for the sandhill crane migration—can begin.
The official estimate of 738,000 animals was made during aerial surveys by the Crane Trust, a nonprofit whose raison d’etre is to protect these magnificent birds and this unforgettable spectacle.
These cranes have been visiting an 80-mile-long stretch of the Platte River, braided in some sections, for 9 million years, which these days lies between the towns of Chapman and Overton, Nebraska.
“What makes the central Platte River valley attractive to sandhill cranes is the river that we help manage,” says Matt Urbanski, a spokesman for the Crane Trust, to KSNB’s Madison Smith. “We will make sure that there’s not a ton of vegetation choking the river out. We’ll make sure that it can widen, so the sandhill cranes have six to eight inches of water to sit in during the nighttime.”
The sandhill crane stands between 3 and 4 feet tall, and is easily identifiable for its crown of red feathers and their rattling bugle-like call. It is one of only 2 species of crane that live in North America...
Interestingly, though the cranes have visited this site for eons, they did so even before there was a river there. Additionally, they now spend much of their time feeding on spare corn kernels leftover from nearby harvests, and spend the night standing in the water where they’re safe from predators.
Arrivals and departures are staggered over several weeks, but at peak stopover, it’s one of the great sights of natural America.
“There is nothing else like it in the world,” says Marcos Stoltzfus, director of the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary in Gibbon, Nebraska, to News Channel Nebraska."
-via Good News Network, April 3, 2025
Researchers combined new and historical data to show birds that nest in cavities – covered nests with small openings – are more likely to use shed snake skins in their construction than birds that build open-cup nests, and this practice helps deter predators from eating the eggs.
“What do snakes eat? They eat a lot of mice and small mammals,” said Vanya Rohwer, senior research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and lead author of “The Evolution of Using Shed Snake Skin in Bird Nests,” published Dec. 17 in the journal The American Naturalist...
Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/01/cavity-nesting-birds-decorate-snake-skin-deter-predators
Fire-tailed Myzornis (Myzornis pyrrhoura), family Paradoxornithidae, order Passeriformes, India
photograph by Dipayan Ray
