Kingfishers in Croatia catch little fish during the harsh winter, when the lake is almost completely frozen and covered with ice © Petar Sabol.
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The northern rockhopper penguin, Moseley's rockhopper penguin, or Moseley's penguin (Eudyptes moseleyi) is a penguin species native to the southern Indian and Atlantic Oceans. It is described as distinct from the southern rockhopper penguin.
A study published in 2009 showed that the population of the northern rockhopper had declined by 90% since the 1950s. For this reason, the northern rockhopper penguin is classified as endangered.
Barn owls have characteristic heart-shaped faces. Their name has arisen from its tendency to nest and roost in barns and other human- made structures. They are capable birds of prey, hunting and catching small mammals, particularly field voles. They have some extraordinary adaptations to help them hunt at night, such as incredibly sensitive hearing and the ability to spot movement in very low light. They make eerie screeching and hissing noises, but do not hoot.
Burchell's zebras (named after the British explorer and naturalist William John Burchell), at Rietvlei Nature Reserve, in South Africa.
Mesmerizing video of a small yellow leaf walking purposefully along a quiet road in China.
On November 19, 2023, in Harbin, in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province, what seems to be a walking leaf stuns Chinese viewers. It appears to be a walking leaf insect, a species that uses its leaf-like appearance as camouflage, although these generally are typically found outside China in South through Southesast Asia, and Australia. Additionally, to confuse predators, when the leaf insect walks, it rocks back and forth, mimicking a real leaf being blown by the wind. However, in this video, no such rocking motion could be discerned.
When the cold season comes and food becomes scarce, hedgehogs curl up into a ball and hibernate until spring, slowing down their heart rate and breathing to consume as little energy as possible. Hedgehogs are generally nocturnal and feed exclusively on insects. To protect themselves they have a layer of about 6,000 quills, which however are not poisonous nor do they come off easily like those of the porcupine — which is a completely unrelated species.
Having admired macaws in our post of five weeks ago (zafoid.com/post/view/11622), this time we will consider a different kind of parrot, namely the parakeet. A parakeet is any one of many small- to medium-sized species of parrot, in multiple genera, that generally has long tail feathers. Shown here (in clockwise direction) is the colourful plum-headed parakeet from India, burrowing parakeets from Argentina during flight, and two images of rose-ringed parakeets.
A team of researchers from Yale University demonstrated that hummingbirds really are the champions of the bird world when it comes to attention-grabbing colours. According to the team’s findings, published in the journal Communications Biology in 2022, the diversity of colours found in hummingbirds they examined exceeds that of all other bird species combined. And not just by a little — when hummingbirds were added to an existing inventory of the so-called bird colour gamut (the full range of colors that birds can produce and detect), they increased that range by around 56%.
This colourful Javan tree frog can only be found on the Indonesian island of Java! (Check out more about more endearing frogs that can be found in Indonesia, here in this earlier post: zafoid.com/post/view/11364)
Merry Christmas to all Zafodians and to all the pets around the world.
Tom Smith Happy Christmas everyone!
