So sorry if this has already been posted - pretty amazing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101013/ap_on_sc/whale_of_a_trip

w3-10 is just lovely - thanks for the link to its capture in the cranberries!

I'm developing arachnophobia  

that's better than parasitic jaeger.

[six parasitic jaegers.]

six parasitic jaegers. (WHAT R THEY)?

It starts out kind of like diaper rash; around the 6th day the redness disappears and you get hiccups.
Forever.

OH, Patti! That is a GREAT find!
How incredible to get to see the birds close up as they belt out all those impossible sounds!
Thanks so much!

One article I read said that "It's like 300, except with more owls"

Not that I saw "300," but it's a cute comment.

[As far as I remember, from my years at U of T, all the Toronto Engineering students flew high!! OH, you mean as in actually flying in the air! Sorry -- my mistake! A in T]

As far as I remember, from my years at U of T, all the Toronto Engineering students flew high!!  OH, you mean as in actually flying in the air!  Sorry -- my mistake! 
A in T

well, he wasn't all THAT high, from what I can see in the video.
Unless those two little strawberries are supposed to be his eyes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ygreen/20100923/sc_ygreen/studentflieslikeabirdpoweredonlybyhimself

The Asian Carp are at the gates of Chicago waiting to invade the Great Lakes.

   Say it ain't so.   

it is apparently absolutely so.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/06/23/128064879/asian-carp-found

that video is SO exciting, Gayle - I sure wish I could see those!!!

Who is the Orkin Man?

Annette, an Orkin man is an employee of a company that provides the service of coming to people's homes or businesses and spraying a substance that is toxic or very offensive to cockroaches and other undesirable insects.

Thanks, Patti!
Gorgeous butterflies  - thanks for sharing them!

Here are terrible photos (sorry - all I could get under the circumstances) of one and then the full EIGHT California condors I was fortunate enough to see in Big Sur 6 days ago. They came out to ride the thermals and look to see if perchance a sea lion or two had expired overnight. I had hoped to see ONE condor ... imagine me down there counting what I had. Almost fell off the cliff onto a sea lion. The sea lions, all zillion and a half of them, were in good health, and so condors stayed fairly high up, thus the crappy resolution. Then they all left and about fifteen or so turkey vultures came out. And then, just in case I needed to be reminded what "twice as big" meant, one condor came back to join the vultures for a spin. And then a redtail hawk joined them (just in case I had forgotten -- which is pretty hard in those parts -- what a hummingbird looks like! The redtail was so puny!). Also sighted: red-shouldereds, stellar's jays, scrub jays, many real hummingbirds, wild turkeys, quail, and much, much more...

"The two wild-hatched Whooping Crane chicks have recently fledged, or become capable of flight.  This is only the second time in over a century that naturally produced Whooping Cranes have fledged in the wild in the Midwest!"

that is astounding. Thank you for that information!

Imagine, someone comes to Chicago, and the first thing I absolutely HAD to share were the button quail tooling around in the underbrush of the butterfly haven. I love those tiny, football-shaped, nearly headless creatures! That room has a wide variety of finches and a honeycreeper with a pale blue mohawk too - I'd never seen them parade their colors before -- they all festooned themselves on one tree just for Anne!

It was a wonderful couple of days for me too!