I love this picture. What a face on both!

                     

 

C'mon let's help these kids get a new Playground...please don't forget to vote.

And not forgetting you Janet....I voted!!

We're up to 17th place but need to get into the top 10.  Please help us get the new playground for the kids by placing your daily vote!  Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV6I1_o6vrY&feature=player_embedded OMG, I can't stop laughing   

This is really funny!

Phew!!! I'm so glad. Thanks Kris.

You're welcome, Donna!  Me too!

Update: 

A bird suspected by some of being a spy for Israel's Mossad is being released by Saudi Arabia after officials learned the creature was merely part of a university research project.

The bird, which was first identified as a vulture but is reportedly a bald eagle, was captured last week by a local hunter in a remote area of the Saudi desert. The bird was wearing a GPS transmitter and a leg bracelet with the words "Tel Aviv University," according to reports that began with the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

Within hours, reports that Israel was using birds of prey in a Zionist espionage plot went viral on many Arabic-language websites and forums, according to Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper.

Though the vulture was tagged in a way to indicate it was part of a scientific study of migration patterns, its arrival in Saudi Arabia came at an inopportune time. Last month, after a string of shark attacks on tourists in the Red Sea, a South Sinai governor suggested they might be a plot by Israeli secret agents.

"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm," South Sinai Gov. Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha said, according to Reuters.

Sponsored LinksBut after the vulture had been captured in Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar bin Saud al Saud, the Saudi nature authority, told Arabic-language news dailies that the bird was not a spy and that there had been been a mixup concerning a tracking device that had been placed on the bird. He also said the bird was a bald eagle.

Prince Bandar scolded local media outlets for what he said was irresponsible reporting, Emirates 24-7 reported.
"Some of the Saudi journalists rushed in carrying the news of this bird for the sake of getting a scoop without checking the information. ... I am not defending Israel, but we need to be clear. ... They [newspapers] should have asked the competent authorities about the bird before publishing such news."

By falconwatcher Joyce
There have been several attempts to try and ID the female peregrine at Kodak Park (KP) by many Rochester watchers, including Kodak employees.  Last September, our KP falcon was very happy to show us her purple band (a sign that she was from the Midwest), but we couldn't distinguish anything on the...

Link:
http://rfalconcam.com/falconwatching/?p=1048

First thought at first glance was 71/H.....without zooming.

That's what I thought but hard to see.  She appears to have a cute patch of white feathers on top of her head!

Now It's Dead Doves Falling From Sky in Italy Jan 7, 2011 – 1:18 PM
Dana KennedyContributor

Thousands of dead turtle doves, many of which had a "strange" blue stain inside their beaks, have crashed from the sky in Italy. They're the latest in a puzzling spate of birds, fish and other animals dying under mysterious circumstances around the world.

Residents of Faenza, Italy, described the fallen doves as lying in heaps on flowerbeds, crushed by machinery on the streets or "horribly hung from trees like Christmas balls," Italy's GeaPress reported today.

Initial testing of about 8,000 of the doves indicate the blue beak stain might be from lack of oxygen or poisoning. More conclusive test results may be available next week.

Just hours before the dove die-off, scientists in the U.S., Europe and Africa were debunking the conspiracy theories and "Aflockalypse" fears that have swirled around the mass bird and fish deaths in the past two weeks.

"This is a classic example of freak events coinciding," Petter Boeckman, a zoologist at the Norwegian Natural History Museum, told Reuters.

Boeckman echoed other experts who said that big animal die-offs are not uncommon but often occur in rural areas and went largely unreported in the days before cell phone cameras, YouTube and Twitter.

Italy's dead doves come not long after 2 million dead fish washed ashore along Maryland's Chesapeake Bay -- and just days after up to 5,000 blackbirds fell out of the sky in a one-mile area near Beebe, Ark., and thousands of drum fish turned up dead along a stretch of an Arkansas river.

Other animal die-offs in the past two weeks include reports of 40,000 dead crabs washing ashore near Kent, England, hundreds of snapper fish dead in New Zealand, 150 tons of red tilapia dead in Vietnam, 500 jackdaws crashing to their death in Sweden, more than 450 birds falling onto a Louisiana highway and a mass of dead fish in a Florida creek.

Fireworks, pollution, disease and parasites are some of the official theories behind the strange deaths.

Federal records indicate mass die-offs happen "on average every other day" in North America, The Associated Press reported.

"They generally fly under the radar," ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science, told the AP.

Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Program, also played down apocalyptic causes but was at a loss to provide a solid explanation.

"Science is struggling to explain these things," Nuttall said. These are examples of the surprises that nature can still bring. More research is needed."

Not everyone believes the official explanations or that mass animal die-offs are commonplace.

"There are a lot of people here not convinced by the official reasons for the dead birds," Max Brantley, the editor in chief of the Arkansas Times weekly, told AOL News today.

"I'm 60 years old and I've never experienced a mass bird death here."

Unofficial explanations invoke biblical end times and rapture theories, predictions by Nostradamus and the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Their proponents, however, have critics as well.

"It's truly amazing to me how many people try to blame this on so many different things, especially the whole religion angle," Benjamin Penman wrote in the Huffington Post. "Please someone post me a single quote in the Bible that says anything about birds dying in the middle of nowhere Arkansas."

Sponsored Links An Alaska-based U.S. military project called High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program,which is a favorite of conspiracy theorists, is frequently mentioned online for being the reason for the bird deaths in the U.S.

One blog, Before It's News, listed 10 leading theories for the bird and fish die-offs that it implied are mostly ignored by the mainstream media.

It listed possible causes ranging from the fairly mundane -- meteor showers, sonic booms, volatile fault lines, shifting magnetic poles -- to the shadowy.

The darker theories include possible secret government testing, something called "scalar weapons" which are described as "directed energy beam weapons that can create natural disasters," and Project Blue Beam, said to be a "sound generator for the global theater of alien invasion."

Beautiful Owl and snow pics, Anne!  Thanks for sharing and glad you had a good time with Nora and family.

Please keep voting daily-we're up to 22nd place today!  Thank you!

http://www.refresheverything.com/bbplayground

This usually works for me.

This is what I use too, Shaky. Even when I haven't logged out, it sometimes shows nothing to read and when I click this, a whole bunch of unread topics will appear.

I closed my Browser and all worked well after. Pfft. I voted for both! 

I voted for both too and BB's up to 26th!! Thanks for all your votes!! 

So would everyone be up for another Pepsi challenge round?  Hope so!  This is for our local elementary school in the Byron-Bergen School district (NY state) which is in great need of a new playground. Voting ends January 31st.  Please help us win this one for the kids!

http://www.refresheverything.com/bbplayground

I'm in!!

The playground committee at Byron-Bergen Elementary School has been working for over a year to raise funds to update and enlarge our old, much used playground. Our new playground will be handicapped accessible so students with varying needs are not sitting on the sidewalk watching others play.  Our new playground will have play space and activities for our newest population of students, 3 and 4 year olds that come to us for Pre-K.  Our new playground will have lots of activites that will exercise our student's bodies in many different ways.   To improve our student's physical and social development we want them to be able to climb, crawl, swing, slide, jump, balance, hang, push, pull, bounce, stomp, spin, run and play.

Thanks for adding on to this for me, Donna!  Love the swing! 

So would everyone be up for another Pepsi challenge round?  Hope so!  This is for our local elementary school in the Byron-Bergen School district (NY state) which is in great need of a new playground. Voting ends January 31st.  Please help us win this one for the kids!

http://www.refresheverything.com/bbplayground

Way to go Aafke, I would have done the same thing. Poor Seal, hope he made it back out. Nice pics too!