Not from North America, and I think not European. Head and mouth rather like an owl. Tail feathers slightly resembling the ruffed grouse’s. My guess is from Australia or Africa.

From Madame Scherzo.

——————————–

Commenter Phil McKann successfully identified it as a Collared Puffbird (Bucco capensis), from South America.

Sullyblog recently found itself another humanitarian crusade to climb on board.

Bad enough our letting the Bush Administration roughly handle jihadi terrorists (Torture!). On top of that, we allow domestic cats to reproduce and then we “introduce” them into natural environments properly understood to be the park and preserve of rodents and small birds. We are kind of like God introducing Spaniards into the New World.

TIBS from Sam Huntley on Vimeo.

—————–

Disapproving Aunt Andrew quotes crusading vegan journalist Deanna Pan writing in Mother Jones about the findings of a study of feline atrocities by the University of Georgia.

About 30 percent of the sampled cats were successful hunters and killed, on average, two animals a week. Almost half of their spoils were abandoned at the scene of the crime. Extrapolating from the data to include the millions of feral cats brutalizing native wildlife across the country, the American Bird Conservancy estimates that kitties are killing more than 4 billion animals annually. And that number’s based on a conservative weekly kill rate, said Robert Johns, a spokesman for the conservancy.

“We could be looking at 10, 15, 20 billion wildlife killed (per year),” Johns said.

—————–

Doesn’t it seem fitting that the moralizing and modernizing representatives of the progressive community of fashion not only hasten to defend the Mussulman bombmaker, but also take time out from ordering the stars in their courses to champion the rights of mice, rats, pigeons, and house sparrows?

Spoilsport Deanna Pan (I bet she was not born with that surname) thinks we should bell and bib our cats in order to foil their hunting.

(Also quoted by Andrew Sullivan) Amanda Marcotte, writing in Slate, contends that helicopter-pet-ownership, i.e. persistent bien pensant human supervision and restricted access to the out-of-doors, is the solution.

One of my cats spent the first year of her life as a completely outdoor cat who slept in a barn, so getting her to stop begging to be let out took some spine, but now she’s perfectly happy to have her outdoor life limited to small amounts of time on the balcony. If I ever feel bad about exerting power over her in this way, I just remind myself I’m being much more generous to her than she’d be to small creatures that she comes across, which goes a long way toward relieving any guilt.

All of which proves, I think, that no limits to officious theorizing of the modern pseudo-intelligentsia can be found to exist.

Personally, I think all these self-appointed legislators’ pantries should be infested with hanta-virus-bearing mice and pigeons should target them whenever they go outside.

——————-

Let Piaf speak for the pussycats.

Not really a new species, this is merely a cane toad trying to eat a bat. He is destined to fail as the LA Times reports.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

Furry photos at the Telegraph.

Via Madame Scherzo.

Hat tip to the Dish.

Hat tip to Gangman.

Hamsters? Prairie dogs?

Hat tip to Scorpix via Madame Scherzo.

From Retreiverman:

From WSAZ.com:

An alligator is such a bizarre, unusual sight in the waters of the Upper Mud River that even seeing isn’t necessarily believing.

“I didn’t even tell my wife,” says Jack Stonestreet, who was fishing on the river last Thursday. “I didn’t tell her because, to be honest, I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

Fishermen over the past several days contacted the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to tell them of the gator sighting. On Saturday, Nick Huffman, a field superintendent with the DNR, saw the scaled reptile with his own eyes.

“I would say he’s a half grown alligator, a total measurement of 67 inches,” Huffman says. “That’s big enough I knew not to get on him in hand-to-hand combat.”

The DNR shot the alligator and pulled it out of the water.

The alligator will now be dissected. Opening the alligator’s stomach may give the DNR some insight as to where it may have come from and how long it was in the river.

West Virginia has almost no regulations on alligator ownership– probably because most people have sense enough not to own one!

But I have seen alligators and caimans available at pet stores, and every once in a while, someone releases a pet alligator into a river or lake in hopes that it will survive in the wild (I guess).

The problem is that alligators live only as far north as northeastern North Carolina. There is some debate about about them having an historical range into southeastern Virginia. I’ve always heard that the Great Dismal Swamp was the northern boundary, but I’ve also heard that alligators once ranged into the James River. In North Carolina, they are found only in the coastal plain, where the winters are comparatively mild. My guess is if they were found in Virginia at one time, they were never found out of the extreme southeastern part of the state, and if they did occur in the James River, my guess is they were found only near the coast.

If they aren’t found outside of North Carolina’s coast plain, how on earth could they survive in West Virginia?

Google map

When moose began showing up, for the first time since Colonial times, in the 1980s in Connecticut, the authorities immediately responding by shooting every one. Government just naturally abhors any novelty.

Personally, I don’t think a single gator represents that much of a hazard, and I think his presence made that river a lot more interesting. If I were in charge, I’d have simply encouraged alligator watching and proposed changing the mascot of the local high school team to an alligator.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Our Moose is called an Elk in Europe.

The Local:

A gang of angry drunken elk barred a man from entering his home in suburban Stockholm on Tuesday, leaving the frightened homeowner no choice but to call police for help.

“Five drunken elk were threatening a resident who was barred from entering his own home,” read an incident report on the website of the Stockholm police department.

The author of the report confirmed that the homeowner, who lives on the island of Ingarö in Stockholm’s eastern suburbs, was justified in calling the police for help.

“I’m not surprised that he called the police when he was faced with a gang of five drunken elk,” police spokesman Albin Näverberg told The Local.

“They can be really dangerous. They become fearless. Instead of backing away when a person approaches, they move toward you. They may even take a run at you.”

The incident involved four adult elk and one calf, Näverberg explained, all of whom were intoxicated after having eaten fermented apples that had fallen from the homeowner’s apple tree.

“Police who arrived on the scene reported that the animals had been warned that the police were on their way and wisely decided to leave the address,” the report read.

“The elk will have to find somewhere else to get intoxicated.”

The homeowner was instructed by officers to clear his yard of fermented apples in order to avoid any future incidents with drunken elk gangs.

According to Näverberg, Tuesday’s run-in wasn’t the first time drunken and aggressive elk had caused trouble for the homeowner.

“A couple of years ago a single drunken elk chased his wife from the yard into the house. She had to bolt the door,” he said.

Drunken elk are a recurring nuisance for homeowners near Stockholm, explained Näverberg, who estimating that police can receive “dozens” of reports in the autumn when apples and fruit from other trees begins to fall.

“If there is a lot of fermenting fruit, then we get a lot of calls about drunken elk. But most often they’re gone before officers arrive,” he said.

Gallery

The dead mountain lion and bighorn sheep were found on a closed road in Glacier National Park. Both evidently fell from somewhere very high on the cliffs above and to the right during the struggle which took place when the lion attacked the ram. The dead lion’s mouth can be seen to contain a large clump of the ram’s hair.

The Imgur commentator confused the bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) with a mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus)

Facebook commentators were quoting Tolkein: “Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside.”